


Conjunction

by Therrae (Dasha_mte)



Series: Xenoethnography [7]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Additional canon disabled character, Anthropology, Canon Disabled Character, Cultural Differences, Director Mearing is Charlie Watson, Kidfic, Languages and Linguistics, Other, multi-canon mashup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22457578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Therrae
Summary: Kidfic, linguistics, and American cultural tropes.
Series: Xenoethnography [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/913458
Comments: 146
Kudos: 346





	1. Affinal Kinship

“So, to make a long story short, if it isn’t too late for that, Morale approved Blaster’s request and we are showing the Rocky Horror Picture Show on Saturday night in Building E. Ethnographically speaking… I should probably get pictures. Practically speaking, you should probably get the props list from Blaster and make sure he isn’t planning to bury us all in hot dogs.”

“Thank you for the heads up. I shall delegate this task to Jazz.”

Kim snorted.

“Is there anything else?”

“No, that was the whole list.” It was early October, and the sun was already down. Kim was wearing a sweater and thinking of actually buttoning it.

“There is something I…have been reluctant to bring up. I think I must, though.”

“Okay. Notebook or not?”

“Not. Kim. I am concerned about your distress.”

Aw, fuck. Kim resisted the impulse to stand up and put the folding chair between them.

“I’m fine. Coping.”

“You are sad and afraid,” he contradicted apologetically. “And it is my fault.”

“No.” Kim took a deep breath. “No. I’m a grown up and my feelings are no one else’s fault. And you have enough on your plate without … this. Me.”

“If I am not responsible for your feelings then you are not responsible for mine. That is an ugly and empty model of our situation, and I reject it.”

Kim closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sure all of you can see—”

“Kim. Beloved friend. I wished to know what sort of relationships our people could have. Without the stresses of combat and the mutual fear and dependence serving together fosters, could humans and mecha relate to one another? I very carefully selected a human whose disposition and training would encourage the best chance of success and… did my best to convince her that my people were like-minded beings, comprehensible and lovable. However. I made two errors in my calculations. I did not consider that the experiment went two ways. And I did not consider what would happen if it succeeded.”

Kim drew a shaking breath. “Sloppy,” she said. “That really isn’t like you.”

“You have not judged me for this. I appreciate the forbearance, although I am not sure I deserve it.”

“I wouldn’t….choose differently. If I knew it all in advance, I’d still…I’d still want to be here.”

Already seated, he dropped lower, joints folding impossibly to bring his chin nearly to the mesa surface. “Perhaps it is difficult, seeing me so often. Perhaps a few days away—”

“No. No, of course I’m not _going_ anywhere! I’m not—I’m not going to waste our time hiding from you. I’d be with you all the time, if I could—and oh, shit, I just asked you to marry me again, didn’t I?”

“Eloquently and romantically.” A soft, restless protoform hum. “But the practicalities defeat us. Even if there were space, I will not have a private residence while my people live in a barracks.” He clicked sharply. “Although ‘garage’ would be a better translation. It would be obscene to invoke my prerogatives…And, too, our schedules are not similar. And you must eat and eliminate. Kim….”

She stood up and stepped forward. “I love you. But I am absolutely not suggesting we move in together. Fixit is done with the renovations. Furniture is arriving. We’re putting four more humans in your base.” _Seven_ _percent_. No. She wouldn’t think about that. “I…I am supposed to make it go smoothly.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not unhappy with the way things are.” _Except the part where you die fighting Megatron._ “I’m sorry. I’ll do better managing—” There was no way to end that sentence.

“Please believe you can—” And then he went still and absolutely silent.

“What’s wrong?”

“One-A has begun integrating the gestation pod,” he murmured. “It will lose containment in seventy-three minutes or less.”

Kim’s breath caught. Hatching. “Already?”

“Already? I could give you a precise accounting of each third of a second of the last twelv- point-one-one orns.”

Every mech on base—Bulkhead, Fixit, Slipstream, Blaster, and Ratchet—was clustered in the assembly area, looking up. The human staff had gone home. Ooo. They’d be sorry they missed this. “Can I take pictures?” Kim asked.

“Why?” Blaster asked.

“It is a human custom,” Bulkhead said. “Ask Major Lennox for his spawn emergence photographs. He is very proud of them.”

“First sparkling born on Earth,” Kim said. “It’s a big deal.” She could barely make out the gestation pod in the shadows of the silo above. It wasn’t moving. It looked the same as it had for the last six weeks. Kim climbed up to the balcony and shoved a couch—new, part of a set, in preparation of more humans in residence—to the edge for a good view.

Below, the ‘Bots were arguing over who would catch the baby when he fell out of the sack. They all seemed to want to, but they seemed unusually hesitant. It was soon clear than none of them had ever done it before, or even seen it done close-to. Reproduction was centralized; creche workers took care of the newborn, not the whole community. As badly as everyone clearly wanted to be the first to greet the sparkling, no one seemed to want responsibility for messing it up.

Optimus alone stayed out of the discussion, staring silently up at the pair of hanging pods. Kim had a feeling that this discussion would end with him being drafted. She checked the power on her phone and tried to figure out how the flash worked.

After a while, Slipstream came up and sat (sort of sat) on the couch beside her. He had Max with him, tethered by a rhinestone harness. Below, there was a soft rustle and tap of nervous mecha running system checks. Optimus was now standing under One-A. The pod was slowly rotating.

“Why don’t they just lower it?” Kim asked. She knew they could. One-B had been brought down several times to have raw materials replenished.

“Its life is about to change completely,” Slipstream said. “It has had no surprises, no choices, no problems. In a proper facility, there would be an elaborate support infrastructure to ease it into the complexities of life. In the absence of that support…well, the drop marks the change clearly.”

“Hm.” A rite of passage, almost. “Won’t it be scared, though?”

Slipstream turned his sensors from the pod to scan Kim in surprise. “Why? It is a short drop in light gravity. Oh. Human infants are afraid of falling. The response appears to be hardwired to the sensor system. But no. The sparkling will feel surprise and then it will be caught. I am very pleased to be able to witness such a beautiful—”

A ball of silver-white tinsel dropped out of the air into Optimus’s arms. It landed with a clang and began squawking. It climbed onto Prime’s head with five glittering, bendy limbs and let out a series of tuneless squeaks. Kim scrambled to bring up her phone. Slipstream leaped to his feet and applauded.

The sparkling—it actually sparkled: gleaming metal, smooth lines—launched itself off Optimus’s head and began to run in circles on the floor. Its yells varied in pitch and length and volume. Its steps, while fast, were limping and unsteady.

Stubbornly, Kim snapped pictures: this baby was a blessing, its first moments were precious, surely this was _normal_ —

It just kept screaming. Not piteous, like a surprised human baby encountering air for the first time. Nor even mechanical, like a mech working out a vocal glitch. The stream of shrieks and roars sounded like rage. Or pain. Or madness.

The phone sagged in her hands and she flowed onto her knees next to the railing. “Oh, what’s wrong? Is it in pain? Oh, god….”

“In pain?” Slipstream asked. He was absently trying to untangle Max’s leash from where it had gotten caught in an armor seam when Max had retreated to cling to the back of the couch. “The sparkling? Why do you think there is pain?”

“It keeps screaming.”

“He is attempting to use his sonar. There does appear to be rather a long learning curve. But I am confident he will settle on a satisfying frequency soon.”

One-A was running on four limbs now, the fifth tucked up like a tail. It was kind of reminiscent of a silver dinosaur skeleton. The sparkling paused beside Ratchet, still wailing horribly.

Ratchet, chirruping softly in Cybertronix, crouched down beside the baby. It was hard to judge size, but he couldn’t be more than four feet tall. Ratchet’s protoform was purring, a thrum that seemed to resonate through the floor.

Whatever he was saying was simple and repetitive. One-A trilled assent, and Ratchet slowly lifted the small, glistening body up in both servos. He turned One-A this way and that, scanning.

Until One-A got bored, slithered out of Ratchet’s hands and up his arm. Gently, Bulkhead reached out and took the sparkling. He produced a glistening, blue marble and popped it into the lipless maw. One-A went slack and then started crowing assent—the only actual word Kim had heard so far--over and over. Bulkhead manifested another.

“Energon goody?” Kim asked Slipstream.

“Yes. We all kept a few back from the party.”

Jazz and Eject came down the corridor. They pointedly weren’t running. Cool, yeah, we’re cool. Chromia was behind them.

Meanwhile, the sparkling was being passed around. Sometimes the little ‘Bot was given treats or talked to. Sometimes he climbed onto heads or dorsal armor. Sometimes he released a blood-curdling shriek.

It was momentous. And exhausting. Kim sat back on the couch, settling in to watch the family drama play out below.

***

 _“Kim, my friend. Stay very still, please.”_ The voice came from the phone in her hand. Slowly, Kim opened her eyes. She could see the arm-rest she had slumped over to rest against….and four tiny camera lenses on stalks a few inches away from her face. One of them was infra-red.

A shift. A clink of metal on metal. One-A. “Query. Query-query-query.” The mouth didn’t move forming the Cybertronix words. Sound seemed to be vibrating all through the silver frame.

“Human,” Kim answered softly.

“Query! Query!” emphasis with volume and repetition—very mech. Shame the linguist wasn’t here yet. “Query!” The tiny ball of the infra-red sensor waved around and thrust forward, went ‘double’ as it hovered close between Kim’s eyes.

“Why am I warm?” Kim asked.

“Wa-a-a-rm!” English, distorted but understandable.

Kim blinked hard. “Mammal. Endotherm. Biology?”

Muttering ‘Query’ over and over in Cybertronix and English, One-A traced the infrared camera along her body, just an inch away from brushing her clothing. Then he lifted a delicate limb—

From his position against the railing, Optimus gave a sharp, tonal ‘ _tok’_ of negation. Then he said in slow, exaggerated English, “It is not permitted to touch humans.”

“Tok. Tok-tok-tok,” One-A said sadly. The other cameras spread as wide as they could on their stalks, looking at Kim from three angles at once. Kim held very still.

Suddenly One-A lost interest and flipped away to leap onto the railing. The little mech scrambled for balance for a moment and then rose up on curved ‘toes’ and trotted along the top.

Kim decided she was too tired to follow, so she closed her eyes.

***

When she woke again, it was very quiet. Kim sat up slowly, put away her phone and went to the edge of the balcony. On the other side of the room, against the wall, Jazz was sitting with One-A cradled in his arms. The silver bundle was slack: sleeping?

Jazz looked up and sketched a smile. Kim got her phone back out and snapped a picture before heading into the dorm to take a shower in the new bathroom. When she returned to the balcony with granola bars and tea, the peaceful pause had ended, and One-A was running back and forth from the mech commissary to the edge of the exit tunnel. Wow.

Arcee stood in the middle of the room, watching the little form race back and forth. She stepped back to stand across the railing from Kim. “Don’t come down. The kid’s clumsy. He’s bumping into things.”

“Dang.” That would hurt. “How fast is going?”

She shrugged. “The average speed is twenty-three point two miles per hour. He could go faster, but turning and stopping are problematic and he runs into walls.”

“Yeesh. Poor kid.”

“Nah. He’s flexible. The dents bounce back. Oh.” Suddenly she called One-A over and scooped him up. A moment later a golf cart came around the corner. General Morshower and Agent Fowler climbed out and trotted up the steps to the balcony. Then, gently, Arcee set One-A on the floor again. He returned to his earnest task of racing back and forth.

“No armor,” Fowler whispered. “No weapons.”

“It’s a baby,” Kim said. “ _You_ weren’t born armed.”

One-A slowed down and circled the golf cart curiously. The delicate silver helm sprouted several antennae. He tapped the hood. He tapped the tires. He chattered at Arcee. She unsubspaced a wheel—It was smaller than her motorcycle wheels and didn’t look quite like an Earth tire—and passed it to him.

Well. _That_ was popular. One-A touched it all over. Tossed it. Rolled it. Chased after it and tripped over it. Bounced up and dragged it over to the floor beneath the balcony and held it up for the humans to admire.

The general crouched down and leaned out through the railing. “That is a very nice wheel you have,” he said gently.

“Wheel! Wheel! I have it!” He rolled it away and chased happily after it.

Arcee leaned against the balcony with a sigh. “He’s very talkative.”

“He…is?” Kim asked.

“He’s broadcasting chatter on all the frequencies he can use. Mostly, he’s saying ‘wheel’ over and over now.”

“Oh.” Kim said. She watched the little ‘Bot roll himself into a ball and roll unevenly beside his wheel. “Do they all run around like this?”

She shrugged. “Yes? No? Normally….there would be at least 64 of them, and they’d…do things, I guess.”

“Huh. What was it like for you?”

“I…kind of don’t know. I didn’t have a good filing system at first. If you can’t organize the memories, they don’t make any sense.”

“Oh.”

One-A was trying to use one of his limbs as an axel now. He balanced on the wheel and then drove it over himself. He ended up in a confused splay on the floor. Kim glanced at Morshower and Fowler. They were staring at the sparkling with rapt attention. Kim took some pictures.

The measured steps of a big mech sounded in the tunnel. Ironhide came around the corner. He had June and Will Lennox tucked in his arms and Carly casually clinging to his shoulder. Without pausing he lifted a foot out of the way of a careening One-A and deposited his passengers safely on the balcony.

Kim leaned over to Carly. “Where’s everybody else?” she whispered.

“Bobby and Dr. No are with Springer on some island in the Indian Ocean. They’re going to be crushed when they find out they missed this.”

There were now six humans watching the baby mech try to balance on a wheel. Kim sat down on the edge, so her feet dangled down and her arms rested on the railing. One-A was trying to fit two of his appendages into a kind of axel. His balance wasn’t great, though. And he had no torque engine, so one of the legs kicked off and rolled himself forward like a scooter.

There was a lot of falling down. The humans didn’t laugh. After an especially long glide, there was some applause—and One-A whirled around and raced past the balcony, waving one of his arms. They applauded more.

Carly dropped down to sit next to Kim. “Wow. I suddenly see the attraction of having children,” she whispered.

“Oh, hell no,” Kim said. “For a start, humans incubate for 9 months. And then it takes a year before our spawn can walk, let alone race around on a wheel.”

Carly sighed. “That’s true.”

One-A started from the other side of the assembly area and charged the balcony where it met the back wall. The little unicycle hit the wall at full speed, shot about a yard up the side, and then backflipped. It would have been very elegant, except that was clearly not little One-A’s plan; as he tumbled ass over teacup, all has limbs shot out straight out in panic. He landed in a quivering heap next to the wheel.

“Hey, now,” the general called softly. “You’ll get it next time.”

“Grandchildren?” Kim whispered.

“Five of them.”

One-A got up and stretched out limbs and antennae. Arcee scanned him, and Ironhide pulled out an energon goody, which was quickly snatched up.

Resolutely, the little mech made tight circles around the golf cart and Ironhide, rolled back and forth on built-up momentum, made passes along the edge of the balcony. The humans waved or applauded. After a particularly graceful stop, Lennox called down, “Wow, you’re a real hot rod, huh, kid?” and One-A froze.

Nervously, Lennox covered, “Good job. You’re doing great!”

“Hot rod?” One-A asked in the flat tones of a mecha that hadn’t integrated the nonverbals pack.

“Uh, yeah. A real hot rod. Very impressive.”

“Hot Rod!” One-A shouted. Arcee flinched, her antennae ducking in.

“Oh, boy,” Ironhide muttered.

“HOT ROD! Hot-rod, hot-rod, hot hot hot.”

“What’s wrong?” Lennox asked.

Ironhide sighed. “He’s named himself. It’s not…particularly dignified. I suppose it could be worse.”

“Oh, yeah,” Arcee said. “It could be much worse. I just wish he wasn’t screaming it over radio.”

The newly christened Hot Rod tired soon after that. Ironhide scooped him up and carried him off toward the mech private areas. Arcee transformed into her alts and headed into the exterior tunnel in a clear retreat to the outdoors.

In the silence, the humans looked at one another.

“Oops,” Lennox said.

General Moreshower sighed. “Don’t worry about it, Son. There’s lots less dignified names. He’ll be fine.”

“That’s just the first one. There’s going to be two of them,” Fowler said.

“They can’t do _that_ all the time….” Kim hazarded. “And. And he improved his coordination very quickly. Amazing, really.”

“We’ll….we’ll limit human access to this part of the base. For a while anyway,” the general said slowly. “Give the kids some time.”

***

Kim found Ratchet in the infirmary sorting through his spare parts box. “Toys for the kids?” Kim asked.

He grunted. “Raw materials to break down and integrate.”

“Oh.” She took a deep breath. “Ratchet. I think maybe I need to know, and I shouldn’t ask Optimus. What’s wrong with Hot Rod?”

“It’s a ridiculous name. And all the translations into Cybertronix are even worse. But we’ll get used to it, I’m sure.”

“No. Um. Why does he have so much trouble talking?”

Ratchet put down the hubcap he’d been holding, considered Kim for a long moment, and then picked her up and carried her into the entrance tunnel. He didn’t say anything until the view of the assembly room was concealed by the curve. Then he crouched against the wall, settled Kim on his knees, and commanded softly, “Describe the problem you perceive.”

“One-B was talking better than this over two weeks ago. In two languages!”

Ratchet’s antennae pulled in and he dropped his chin. His optical lenses were fixed and unfocused. “Kim,” he said gently. “The problem isn’t Hot Rod. We chart sixty-four axes of development. He is within .5% of the average on sixty of them. The other four are within one standard deviation and better than average.”

“But—he’s not—he just runs around yelling!”

“He’s figuring out how to use his body. Coordinating limbs is very complicated. It takes humans—Seriously? Six to eight months just to crawl? Primus, what a species!”

“So…When One-B comes out…things will be pretty much the same?”

“Kim. We’re not sure what is going on with One-B.”

Her stomach plummeted. “I—I asked about the wrong one.”

“The irregular development….it may not actually be…that is to say, it may be more normal than we know. A sparkling in development on Cytertron or one of the colonies or even on board a ship would not be exposed to the sort of primitive radio activity… I mean, we’ve done as much with the human WIFI and phone systems as we can, but they are still ridiculously simple and hackable. Perhaps the reason our own unfinished sparklings never communicated wasn’t that they never tried, but that they didn’t have an interface they could breach.”

Oh. Well. Yeah. Human technology was pretty pathetic. “What are the alternatives?”

Ratchet’s protoform pealed a ringing sigh. “It might have been that we simply gave these sparklings too little generative...guidance.”

“What does that mean?”

Ratchet shifted slightly. “So many of us suffered--I should ask, I suppose, how much you know about the different philosophies of reproduction Cybertron implemented. You know about Functionalism? And cold casting?”

Kim nodded. “A little. You mean like minicons.”

“Not just minicons--Bulkhead, for example. His spark was placed in a completed product-line body as soon as his protomatter crossed the threshold to support it. His processors were already configured and pre-loaded with basic information. He was productively at work in less than forty orns.”

“Fuck.”

“It’s not the best way to make a mech,” Ratchet said. “You would say that it vastly limits capacity for ‘growth.’ The phrase would not mean physical growth.” His optics reset. “Cold forging like that leaves emotional and intellectual scars. Bulkhead...was designed to be a construction technician. Low level. Supervised. He’s come a tremendous way, despite his disadvantages. But we wonder what sort of great master he might have been, if he had been allowed to explore his own creativity from the beginning.”

Kim felt a little sick.

“So. There was never a detailed discussion. We all wanted to give these new children all the freedom we could. So their processors are customizable and expandable. The memory quartz with the design patterns contains options for flight, compressed sensory busses...these sparklings might have chosen to be seekers or habs. Almost nothing was pre-structured. Not even the order of construction, and One-B decided to ignore all the optional templates and build cognitive processors three orns too early. And instead of just carrying on growing protomatter and functional components, that cognitive processor got curious and started exploring the world through the transponder we were using as a slagging baby monitor!”

“Is there gonna be enough protomatter to support a full-sized frame?” Kim asked.

“I expect that threshold will be crossed in point-oh-two orns. And that is very good news. And I urge her continually to take her time, to be patient….”

“Wait. You’re still communicating with--? Really?”

“She initiates radio contact with me roughly eleven times an orn, at irregular intervals.”

“Dang. I didn’t realize.”

“It is mostly requests for information.”

“What does One-B say to everybody else?”

A sigh “Only me. So far. We are trying to limit distraction and inappropriate information. So far, I have managed to satisfy her well enough to forestall emergence.”

“Wait. When are you sleeping?”

“I am not.”

“Aw, Ratchet!”

“It cannot be helped. Can you imagine what sort of inappropriate nonsense she would get from Jazz or Windblade?”

“Why do you keep saying ‘she,’ though?” Kim asked, momentarily distracted from her sympathy for Ratchet’s sleeplessness.

“She declared a gender affiliation in our fifth communication.”

Kim turned that over. “That doesn’t make any sense. Mech don’t have genders. They have...other stuff.” Possibly weirder and more complicated, considering the myriad configurations between reproductive roles, frame types, and social stratification.

“No. But I passed along a file on human interaction. And then One-B asked about the gender of the human she had spoken to and…” Ratchet shrugged.

“But--that’s awful. That’s a terrible reason to pick a gender, and One-B shouldn’t have to at all anyway! It’s not real. It’s an alien social construction. One-B should not be constrained by that.”

“Real?” Ratchet said. “It isn’t real for you either. All of your culture--your American individuality, the weird modesty that confuses Fixit so much, your social contract, good manners, professional ethics--it’s all a construction alien to you until you learned it. All that was imposed on you by your community. Are you saying One-B should not be ‘constrained’ by democracy? Or traffic laws? Or speak English?”

Kim opened her mouth. Shut it.

“As--as potentially perilous One-B’s development path has been, I have to believe One-B’s spark knows what form best suits her. If it is incorrect to dictate frame type or alt form or processor configuration, it is absurd to dictate what sort of interface style to present to humans.”

Ratchet wasn’t wrong. Kim still felt horrible.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter to us,” Ratchet said, brightening. “Masculine or feminine doesn’t organize our lives. If she were human and a woman there would be parts of the world where she might not have the right to vote or inherit property or drive or refuse to gestate or be mentioned by name instead of the designation ‘wife.’ Your vulnerability will never be hers. Optimus--did you know? He plans carefully where he takes you, because there are jurisdictions where you are a subordinate person. But One-B is no human. That unfairness will never apply to her. Your anxiety is misplaced.”

Kim wasn’t entirely sure of that, but she had to admit, it ranked lower than most of the problems the sparkling had. 

“Can I do anything to help?”

“Well, don’t jump to conclusions. And if you are worried about something, for the awe of Primus, come to me, not Optimus.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

***

By two that afternoon, Hot Rod was up again and racing around the assembly area on his wheel. In short order Kim was exhausted from tensing up every time he crashed into a wall. Or the stairway. Or the new elevator. Or a mech who had been unable to predict his path.

Also—she admitted this only privately—it was a little boring watching the same thing over and over. Resolutely, she sat on the couch at the edge and took notes. That was better. Still simultaneously boring and terrifying, but she felt virtuous about it.

Hot Rod was not exploring. He had no interest in the walls themselves--or the tunnels or the steps or the medical bay around the corner. He didn’t interact much with the mecha or the watching human. According to Slipstream, who regularly brought Max out on her leash to check on the sparkling, he was directing both sonar and radar at whatever was straight in front of him. Sometimes he would mutter ‘go, go,’ over the radio in English or Cybertronix (Kim had an app on her phone that could track his radio conversation now).

Just before 3:30, Bulkhead arrived with Jack and Miko. They scooted obligingly up the stairs and perched at the edge of the balcony.

“I thought it would be….bigger,” Miko said.

“He,” Kim corrected. “He’s picked a name. Hot Rod.”

“That’s…direct,” Jack said. He looked a little pale, watching the mech below. “He’s cute,” he added determinedly.

“How is that cute?” Miko asked.

“Like a puppy. With a ball.”

Miko grunted. “A puppy with a wheel he sits on top of and kicks up speed with a prehensile tail until he hits a wall at a zillion miles an hour—Oh, nice backflip. Do you think he does that on purpose?”

Jack swallowed. “Kim, he isn’t getting hurt, is he?”

“No, his mass is mostly protomatter, which is bad if it’s cut or burnt, but can spring back when it’s squished. The shiny outer part is really thin, and it isn’t a single sheet, but…it’s like chain mail, sort of. It will probably eventually be the innermost layer of his armor. I think.”

This time, Hot Rod leaped and flipped just before hitting the wall and used two of his feet to kick off, so he was rolling in the other direction when he landed.

“Neat,” Miko said. “When do you think he’ll start giving rides?”

Jack opened his mouth, shut it.

“So,” Kim said briskly, “I hear you two went to the Egypt with Bulkhead and Arcee over the weekend. How was it?”

“Pyramids are boring,” Miko said. “And we weren’t even near the good ones. Camels, though. And the food was great.”

“You know,” Jack said slowly, “It is actually easier to believe I spent a weekend with aliens than it is to believe I actually saw a pyramid. I mean, I kind of assumed I’d have a really boring life.”

“Interesting isn’t always a good thing,” Kim said as Hot Rod swerved to avoid Ironhide’s peds and flipped sideways into a skid that made a pretty awful noise against the stone floor.

Ironhide reached down to right the sparkling, but Hot Rod squirmed free and scampered away, dragging his wheel.

Ironhide came to lean against the corner where the wall and balcony came together. His antennae were out, and all pointed at the little mech fitting one of his limbs into an axel for the wheel. Kim glanced at the human kids, and then slowly stepped over to the corner. “Hey,” she said softly.

“Hey,” He agreed. A protoform sigh. “I never thought I’d live to see another. I feared we were extinct.” His vocalizer reset. “And look. Earth has given us a home. And a baby. Ratchet says he is within half a standard deviation of the mean in all respects.”

“He’s perfect,” Kim agreed. She reached out and laid a hand on the forearm that rested against the balcony edge. Mecha didn’t need to ‘lean.’ Their balance didn’t need adjustment like human balance did. It wasn’t tiring for them to stand. “I have a question, though. Springer had three legs when he arrived. And I notice little Hot Rod his five limbs. Is that a common….configuration? And is coordinating three legs harder or easier than two?”

“That fifth appendage is pretty common, actually,” Ironhide answered. “It normally becomes the suspension of the alt form.”

Kim’s breath caught. “Wow.” She hadn’t even thought about Hot Rod’s first alt. “How does—I mean—when does he get shown an alt?”

“Depends. A full alt? Might not happen until he puts on a lot more mass. He might be happy spending a couple of years playing with his body, experimenting with adding external components. We’re all waiting for this one to ask for more wheels. Ratchet says we mustn’t mention torque motors either. He should work it out for himself.”

“Oh.”

Hot Rod was spinning in ever tighter circles, steering with his extra limbs like a rudders. The floor was throwing up sparks.

“Huh.” Kim said. “Is that safe?”

“Sure. Yeah. Nothing flammable down there.” A pause. “I’m next on duty when he gets tired.”

“Mech aren’t _touchy_ ,” Kim said. “Why does he always get cuddled when he shuts down? Is it different when you’re younger?”

“Well, normally there would be 64 of them at a time. Or more. And their fields are small, see, and they don’t have a lot of skill with their EM sensors. And they’re normally kept in a creche—you know, with walls. A big space for them to play or experiment or recharge all together. We don’t know that being isolated would be bad, but we’ll overlap for recharge until they decide they don’t want to.” He went very still, and when he spoke again his voice had lost its accent and expressive inflection. “I didn’t expect to live to see a sparkling,” he said.

Kim patted his arm.

When Hot Rod began to wobble on his wheel, Ironhide picked him up and carried him off to defrag his drive. Jack let Miko show him the video game system on the balcony and Kim headed off to grab an early dinner at the DFAC.

The next morning, Hot Rod had substantially improved his steering, breaking, and balance, and that seemed to mellow him out a lot. The little mech still drove incessantly, but now he greeted the mecha he (successfully) dodged and requested whoever was watching critique whatever complicated trick he was trying to learn. He didn’t seem to differentiate between watching humans and watching ‘Bots in this request, which Kim noted carefully.

There was a bit of a slow down when he started trying to roll sideways, but once he turned the wheel, that took off very quickly.

When Jetstorm carried him off for another recharge around noon, Kim headed out to the DFAC for lunch, collecting Maggie and Fixit on the way. Now that the upgrades to the human dorm were done, Fixit had been at loose ends as to how to fill his off-time. Bigger ‘Bots who were bored sometime took an extra patrol and went exploring, but given Fixit’s size and limited alt form, that was off the table. He didn’t find racing radio-controlled human toys behind storage building R satisfying. He had not taken to karaoke.

That left human mass media, and since that was highly idiosyncratic and context-dependent, he had lots of questions.

When they got to the DFAC, Steeljaw and Eject were at the karaoke machine, in the opening bars to…something vaguely familiar. Fixit darted over and did something to static the sound. “Not that one. It is racist. To sing it is an act of social aggression.”

Steeljaw’s response was Cybertronix Kim didn’t recognize but was probably profanity. Kim would have to ask—later. Right then, Fixit was explaining the checkered history of 90s pop bands.

“Where did this come from?” Kim whispered to Maggie.

“He’s been reading back archives of The Economist, Cracked, National Geographic, Discover, and Field and Stream. So. One of those.“

“What is he going to do when he runs out?”

A shrug. “He’s already getting a little bored. He might apply for a job at Google.”

“Can he do that?”

“He has a green card….” She sighed. “He’d have to telecommute, obviously.”

The discussion between Fixit and Steeljaw was getting intense. They weren’t speaking loudly, but they went back and forth with short sentences, mostly in Cybertronix, but with English words thrown in haphazardly.

Kim looked around the DFAC, almost crowded, people in camo getting lunch, Eject, standing to the side of Fixit and Steeljaw, practicing gestures of puzzlement and surprise. His timing was a little off….

Someday she would have to write about the ‘Bot’s normal life: what they did on their off time, how they found out about human culture. Would she write about this lunch? She’d have to get the content of Fixit’s discussion. Assuming he would share.

He probably would.

The three mecha were back at the karaoke machine, searching for another song.

June set a tray on the table and sat down across form Kim. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Music drama,” Maggie said.

Lately, June had been bringing her lunch and eating at the mech infirmary. It was unusual for her to come all the way in for lunch. “What’ up with you?”

“Next week is fall break,” she said tightly.

The speaker played the lead in to “True Colors,” and Fixit returned to the table looking very satisfied.

“What’s fall break?” Kim asked.

“You know. Like spring break, but in the fall. They let the kids out for a week. And Bulkhead, Wheeljack, Brawn, and Arcee want to take Jack and Miko to an island in the Indian Ocean for the whole week.”

Kim and Maggie looked at each other in puzzlement. “What island?” Kim asked.

“I don’t know. They have a construction project.” She stopped, sighed, glanced at Maggie. “I know you’ve been sending materials by Bridge.”

Maggie shrugged. “It makes sense. We’ve got a really small off-site holding area for if we ever get a Decepticon prisoner. But obviously we need a back-up location. In case Jasper gets compromised.”

June poked her food, put down the fork. “Whatever it is, it isn’t functional now. The kids will have to tent it.”

Kim thought about that. “Well. So much for pretending we’re following the rule about keeping Miko on US soil. “

“Well, apparently it’s a US military base. Sort of. It might not count as another country.”

“So…is this a tropical island? With, like…beaches?”

“I’m not actually sure.”

“Yes,” Fixit said. “The location meets the criteria for ‘tropical.’ It is rather small. There are beaches.”

“Wow,” Maggie said. “Can I go, too?”

“God yes,” Kim agreed. But no. Hot Rod was developmentally interesting right now; babyhood only came once. One-B would hatch immanently. And Optimus disliked sand, anyway, so beach vacations were out. And, oh, she hated to think about the fact that she was planning her vacations based on what he preferred. Dear God.

But there was no question; they had so little time. Even if it took a few years, it was too little time—

And, shit, this wasn’t a good time to think about that. She mustn’t think about that—

“Kim? You okay?” Maggie asked.

“Oh. Sorry. Yeah.” Kim looked down at her tray and picked at the remains of her sandwich. “You know, it would be reasonable for June to have a look at the site first. Before the kids stay there. And if they’re camping, look over the supply list and all. Make sure they’ve got actual food. Bulkhead’s great and all, but he sucks at getting Miko to eat normal meals.”

“That’s not a bad idea, actually,” June said. “Maybe I could think of it like sleep away camp. On the other side of the planet.”

“That’s the spirit, mate,” Maggie said.

***

When Kim got back to her post on the balcony, Hot Rod had four more wheels.

The new wheels were smaller and had nice axels with good grips for his little servos to grab onto. But he was trying to use all five of the wheels at once, and while he had five limbs the original wheel was several inches larger and it was throwing the steering off. Several times all of his limbs rolled in different directions, dropping him on his….belly? Ventral surface? –with the wheels spinning sadly.

He was a persistent little ‘Bot, though. Stubbornly, he climbed on to the wheels again and again and tried to roll forward.

Progress finally came when he lifted the original, larger wheel up and held it in the air while he eased forward on the four matching wheels. In a matter of minutes, he was kicking off like a roller skater, finding a rhythm and then gaining speed. The learning curve was shorter now; in a couple of hours he had learned to do all the tricks he’d learned on the single wheel.

He was doing tight circles around Mirage, who was his current watcher, when Bee arrived with Raf. Bee delivered him to the foot of the stairs and sent Raf up to join Kim on the couch.

“So, I hear Fall Break is a thing that happens,” Kim said cheerfully as he sat down.

“Yeah. I have to hurry up and get my English paper written so I can come up and play with Hot Rod.” His eyes never left the small form racing around below.

Kim winced sympathetically. “I’m not sure he’ll be cleared to…you know…be within touching distance of humans by next week. He’s still pretty…wild.”

Raf frowned. “Really? He looks really precise. He’s alternating feet.”

Kim watched Hot Rod pirouette. “I’m not sure they are feet….”

“Kim, the calculations he’s running—humans don’t notice all the bits of balance and force and speed and distance that have to be accounted for. And every time he adds mass or increases the rigidity of his carapace he’ll have to recalculate everything.” Raf chewed his lip for a moment and then dug through his backpack and produced a pink rubber ball about the size off his fist.

“Um, Raf—”

He headed for the steps without looking back.

“Raf—”

Bee, who had dropped into alt beside the communications station, let out a series of warning chirrups and chimes. Raf ignored that too and walked down the stairs.

Kim followed him half way down. “Raf? He probably doesn’t understand how fragile humans are.”

“Then he needs to start paying attention.” At the foot of the stairs he stopped and began bouncing the ball.

“No,” Kim said. “Really.”

Hot Rod made three passes before stopping in front of Raf. One of his camera stalks followed the ball up and down.

Raf caught the ball and held it level. “Hello. My name is Raf. I’m a human. Do you speak English?”

“I speak English. Hello, Raf. I am Hot Rod. I am an Autobot. May I ask about your wheel?”

“It isn’t a wheel. It’s a ball. It’s for rolling and catching.”

“Why is it for catching? It is already in your possession.”

Raf bounced it. “People throw a ball to each other. Toss and catch.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun.”

“Please demonstrate.”

“Okay, go back over there and get ready. I’ll throw it, and you catch it.”

Diffidently, Mirage said, “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“We’ll just give it a try,” Raf said gently. He tossed the ball, a single bounce, gently toward Hot Rod.

He got a limb into position in time, but since he had not let go of the wheel, he couldn’t grasp the ball, which bounced off and rolled away.

“That’s pretty good,” Raf said, retrieving the ball. “Let’s try again.”

Mirage shifted uneasily. Bee scolded softly. Raf tossed the ball again. On the third try, Hot Rod caught it. “Okay,” Raf said. “Now for throwing it back, give me the ballistic calculations. Cybertronix is fine, English is really awkward for that.”

Satisfied with the calculations, Raf nodded. The toss was perfect, the ball coming neatly into Raf’s hand. But Hot Rod overbalanced and fell over. The little bot stood up, set down all of his wheels, set his feet, and held out a servo for the ball. Raf tossed again. Hot Rod caught it neatly.

They tossed the ball back and forth. A couple of times Hot Rod wriggled his whole little body.

And then Raf went over and began to whisper something.

Mirage spun on Bumblebee. “Do something,” he said.

Kim didn’t recognize Bee’s answer, but it had a semi-profane emphasis.

Hot Rod reached out a limb and poked Raf in the stomach.

“Raf, I think that’s enough. Let’s not push it.”

There was a heavy mech in the tunnel, running. Kim bit her lip. The run was fast and hard enough to vibrate through the floor all the way to the stairs.

Optimus rounded the corner and froze. Raf was climbing onto Hot Rod’s back.

“Rafael,” Optimus said softly. “This is ill-advised.”

“It’s fine,” Raf said, legs tight around Hot Rod’s skeleton-dinosaur waist. He leaned close, whispering. The soft hum of Hot Rod’s voice whispered back.

Slow and tentative, Hot Rod carried Raf over to Optimus and then lowered his whole body so that Raf could climb off. As soon as his passenger was clear, Hot Rod stepped back and did a little wiggling dance.

Optimus leaned down and spoke to Hot Rod, too softly for Kim to hear. Hot Rod wiggled again and scampered off to retrieve his wheels (all five of them) and the ball. Carrying his booty took up three of his limbs, so he tried rolling on only two. He fell twice before he reached Mirage, who scooped up the tired sparkling and carried him off into ‘Bot country.

Optimus picked up Raf and carried him back to the balcony. Raf….was compliant but not apologetic. Optimus set him on the steps beside Kim. “That risk was unacceptable,” Optimus said. “If he had miscalculated, you could have been killed. He doesn’t understand--”

“He won’t understand without experience.”

“Rafael—”

“If he makes a mistake and hurts a human when he doesn’t understand, when he does, finally, understand…it will break his heart.”

“Using yourself as the practice model was irresponsible and potentially disastrous.”

“If my EM field hadn’t gotten his attention, I wouldn’t have tried it.” He took a deep breath. “He may live his whole life with humans.”

Optimus didn’t answer.

“Bee?” Raf said. “He’s going to sleep the rest of the afternoon. Wanna go for a drive?”

When Bumblebee had collected him and retreated hastily out the tunnel, Kim took a step closer to the railing. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped him.”

“Physically? Never. I cannot imagine the disaster, if Hot Rod had perceived physical interference with Raf or himself as an attack.”

Kim closed her eyes. Tried to smile. “I won’t be putting you getting chewed out by the tween in my notes.”

“I…should not have done it. How could I have imagined we could raise sparklings here? If Rafael had been injured….” A soft, protoform wail.

“Ugh. Okay, that? No.”

He turned his head to look down at her. “What no?”

“No, you don’t get to go ‘it’s hard, it sucks, I give up.’ Just no.”

“Kim—”

“Look, I get that parenthood is really hard. And this isn’t how you usually do this. And there are so many problems you didn’t have before. But you just keep going and do your best.”

His optical lenses cupped more deeply, making the light blue lenses seem to darken slightly. “What do you know about it? You have never done this either. Even among your own species.”

“That is true! But I was a kid, like, 15 years ago. Not seven thousand,” Kim growled back.

Optimus lifted his chin slightly. “That is actually…a valid point.”

Kim sat heavily on the step. “Look. My stepmom—she didn’t expect to _be_ a mom. And if it was going to happen at all, you usually get a baby, right? I was like Raf’s age. And we already had ways we did things, and we didn’t want to be babies and didn’t like _sancocho_ and—“ Kim swallowed hard. “Anyway, you commit to it and you do it. And I guess sometimes it feels awful. And I really wasn’t in a hurry to be a parent either, but here we are.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry. You probably don’t actually need me yelling at you.”

“But here we are,” he agreed.

“I assume near misses and being regularly grateful they failed to kill themselves…is normal. You’re not screwing it up.”

“We wanted to do it better,” he whispered. “The best that could be said for any of us—in the beginning, when we were newborn—was benign neglect. And I have watched humans with their children. Loving them, even before their potential becomes apparent. But Rafael—”

Kim reached over the railing and patted Optimus’ arm. “He’s fine. They’re both fine. Until tomorrow when we get to panic over something else. Huh. I want to call home. Clearly I did not appreciate my parents enough.”

“Major Lennox is a parent. Perhaps I should have him in for a consultation. Or a symposium.”

***

Someday, the story of the first days of the first sparkling born on Earth would be important. Humans would want to know—maybe _need_ to know about these adorable and vulnerable days.

Kim spent Friday on the balcony typing—not notes, but sentimental prose. Now while it was fresh, while every detail was clear, she would tell the story of this baby, and someday, when humans knew about the war, had seen the colossal mecha, had freaked out in anger and fear, there would be the story of One-A, the first born on Earth.

Obligingly, Hot Rod spent most of the day being cute. He had noticed that both the mecha and humans around him were bipedal. He’d worked out how to maneuver his wheels in pairs, configuring two of his rear limbs to grip them by the axels. The middle rear limb he stuck out behind him for balance (which did seem to give him a great advantage over a human roller skating) and reared up so his sensor hub and forward limbs were free.

He was half a week old. At this age a human infant couldn’t even manage focusing his eyes more than eighteen inches or reliably hold up his own head.

But, of course, Hot Rod wasn’t having to build up muscle strength one day at a time. Or lift a head that was ridiculously out of proportion to his body because it had evolved to be at the upper limit of what his species could fit inside a womb and squeeze through a birth canal.

Even with all the advantage of structure and pre-programming, being wheeled and upright was a herculean task and took most of the day to master.

And persistent? Dear god. Over and over he fell, and never once did he sit and scream in frustration. He just got up and tried to push forward again, frantically swinging the tail for balance. Over and over.

Bulkhead had baby duty, and when Kim couldn’t stand it anymore, she went over and asked him, “Can’t we do anything to help?”

“We will. When the fragmented files and error messages start to pile up, I’ll take him off to nap time.”

“No, I mean, like, mention that the big mecha usually walk on two feet and roll on four.”

“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “We’re not supposed to do that. It’s his body, and he should figure it out his way.” He frowned. “It’s a good thing he hasn’t shown signs of wanting to fly. That would be complicated….” He sighed. “We’d have to get him outside somehow….Yeah, just be glad it’s wheels.”

Hot Rod practiced with single-minded dedication until he fell over in exhaustion and was carried off for a nap. Twice. Kim kept typing. Hot Rod mastered upright rolling. He still carried his original wheel around like a teddy bear.

Really, it was adorable enough to make you weep.

Almost adorable enough to make Kim forget the war and the danger and Optimus’ desperate plan to end it.

When she couldn’t put two words together anymore, Kim fetched some dinner from the kitchen (frozen ravioli from the spacious full-sized freezer) and downloaded some parenting books. She settled on the steps overlooking the floor where Hot Rod was playing with the ways his feet hooked into the wheels. Optimus arrived at about five-thirty, but instead of going up to the mesa for the evening interview they stayed in the assembly area, watching the baby examine his toes and how they held the axels.

When, at about seven, he was taken away again (Arcee, this time), Kim stood up and ran her hands through her hair. “Interview?”

He hesitated a moment. “I think…I would prefer a drive. If you don’t object.”

“Yeah. Fine. Let me check the bag.” Kim couldn’t remember the last time she’s carried an actual purse. For the field she had a canvas tote with a notebook, pens, the small laptop, tissues, her NEST ID, and a bottle of water.

Optimus drove sedately until they were off base—then he turned north and opened up on the highway.

It was hard, in the dark, to tell how fast they were going, and his speedometer was mostly cosmetic and couldn’t be relied on for accuracy. Fast, though. Also, he wasn’t bothering with headlights. With infrared and sonar on the empty, straight highway, he didn’t need them. But he usually followed traffic laws. He usually pretended he was a normal Earth truck….

All of it was unusual. Very, very unusual. Kim leaned back in the seat and was quiet. It was unusual, but it wasn’t bad. If Optimus wanted to cut loose and enjoy some impossible speed, well, Kim had worked with mecha long enough to understand that this was a thing.

Well, not _understand_. She didn’t have wheels or a torque engine, and running on feet was nothing like…this.

So she sat, listing to the hiss of road under tires. Outside it was cool enough that the windows began to fog up. They flashed past a county-line sign. Kim revised her estimate of their speed upward; counties were big in Nevada.

They raced on through the night.

Kim took a deep breath. “So. You stressing about the babies?”

“No. I am stressing about politics. I was in meetings in Washington all day.”

“Ouch. You want to talk about it?”

“The new E.U. liaison was…very insulting.”

Kim thought about that, unsure what to ask. “What kind of insulting,” she said carefully. “Like…didn’t recognize the authority of Prime?”

A sigh—or maybe a growl. “He did not recognize my sentience.”

“Shit,” Kim whispered.

“Indeed. As far as Mr. Osmundsen is concerned, I am a very complex mechanism that elegantly mimics emotion and independent thought.”

Kim’s mouth dropped open. No sound would come out. She clinched her hands and then tried again. “Slag.”

“Agreed,” Optimus said inflectionlessly.

“So. Are you frustrated? Or hurt?”

“I am afraid, Kim. I am very afraid. I have risked my people’s future on the alliance with Earth.”

“Yeah. But this one guy doesn’t really endanger that.”

“How many more like him will there be?”

Kim tipped her head back and sighed. “Maybe I could talk to him.”

“That is unlikely to help. He dislikes Americans.”

Kim’s short, surprised “Ha!” might have been a laugh. “Well, I’m in good company, then.”

“Ah. Indeed. You can judge a person by their enemies. We are well suited.”

Kim leaned forward and rested the back of her hand against the pedestal of the hula-girl dash decoration. “I don’t…I can’t promise everything will be okay, Optimus. But I can promise, telling the world that your people are people, that’s my job. The only job I will ever have, my whole life.” She might have said more, but her eyes had abruptly filled and spilled over. Kim pulled back her hand and wiped her eyes.

“I do not doubt you.”

“But you’re scared. And you aren’t wrong. Humans can be absolute shit. But all I can think to do is keep moving forward.”

“It’s a chance. I must take it.”

“We need to…invite this guy to dinner or something. Not Rocky Horror—geez, is that tomorrow? Or… no, we can’t invite him to the bot commissary. The furniture is so huge and so mismatched, it will come across as creepy.”

“You think the bot commissary is creepy?”

“No, but I’m weird. Oh. Wait. Maybe he can classify you as an object because you look like a car and robot. And you’re really polite.”

“I will not even comment on a species that thinks objects can be ‘polite’ or ‘rude.’ You have no idea.”

Kim patted the hula dancer. “No, but let’s introduce him to Steeljaw. And Brawn.”

“Brawn? Are you sure?”

“Dislike is an emotion. And not one a robot’s programmer would bother to fake. Although. Maybe this isn’t about changing his mind. Maybe he just has an agenda.”

Optimus braked—suddenly, hard, pushing Kim forward for a moment against the belt. Kim threw out her hands, looking to grab something, but the breaking eased and they slewed slightly sideways.

And then they were still.

Kim laid her hand flat on the dash. “You okay?”

His vocalizer staticked for several seconds. Surprise turned to panic, and Kim scrambled for her phone. If he couldn’t speak, he might be glyphing.

He wasn’t. Kim flipped over to the contacts. “You need to let me know—who am I calling? Ratchet? Or Ironhide?”

His answer was in cybertronix, and Kim didn’t understand a single word of it.

And then his headlights turned on, high beams, nearly as bright as day. “They—they are the same temperature as the road, and the road is warmer than the ground. I—I did not perceive them.”

Kim leaned forward frowning. The road stretching north seemed….speckled? Something small…. “What are those?”

“Spiders.”

“Well, no,” Kim said after a moment. Accounting for shadow and perspective they were still nearly as big as Kim’s hand. “That can’t…be…spiders….”

“It is spider migration season in Nevada. However, normally they are very widely spaced and in much smaller numbers.” His voice was inflectionless. “It is unusually cold tonight and the road is slightly warmer. However. To see tarantulas collected in such numbers and proximity is unprecedented in this area.”

“Wow. Cool. I guess.” Tarantulas didn’t hurt humans. The great diversity of life, right? She squinted down at the speckled road and tried not to shudder. Or gag.

“Unexplained anomalies are not ‘cool,’ in my experience.”

“You mean, this is like the disturbed weather patterns?”

“I fear so.”

“Well, that’s not good.”

“No.” His voice was still flat. Kim chewed her lower lip, thinking. “So…are you feeling bad about driving over the spiders?”

“They are harmless creatures.”

“Lots of bugs would see it differently. And now other creatures will eat them.”

“Even here in the desert, life presses relentlessly close. It is impossibly varied and alien.”

“So…you’re just all shades of freaked out right now.”

His voice was staticky: “Yes.”

Softly, Kim said, “It doesn’t matter that it’s alien. You totally get me, and I’m alien. I’m alien, and we have a lot in common and I love you a lot.”

A soft sound, a protoform vibration.

“It’s okay to get freaked out. When, um, when June and Arcee opened up your helm and swapped out some of the sensor parts, I freaked out. Anthropologists write a lot how about when things are unfamiliar and unpredictable, that freaks a person out and messes them up in weird ways. It’s okay, to feel what you’re feeling.”

He was silent.

“You were totally stressed out to begin with. It’s been a…busy week. And it occurs to me that having me in your cargo space might be making it worse. If you need me to get out for a few minutes—”

“No!”

“The spiders won’t hurt me. Even if they were the kind that bite, they’re confused and cold.”

“Kim, the only comforting thought I have in the universe right now is that you know what love is and you trust me enough to stay here while I’m freaking out.”

“Okay. Should I be quiet or keep talking?”

“Kim…You must speak. You are not communicating by radio, not even a carrier wave. And your EM cannot reach my spark from where you are sitting—”

“So, if a mech were here, they would be communicating with you in several different ways? And even though I’m _here_ , it still feels…isolated? Lonely?”

“I am reminding myself that you are not indifferent.”

Well fuck. Kim popped the seat belt and scooted all the way forward, resting her arms on the dash and cupping her hands around the hula dancer decoration. “Not indifferent. Never. Even when you’re all opened up and I see there’s no guts or blood in there and I remember you think with silicon and quartz, I never forget how much I care about you.” She lifted one hand and retrieved her phone. One handed, she opened the glyph app and sent him a time ping. “Listen. Let’s ease on out of here and go back to base and go straight to the wash rack? Okay. I would be creeped out if I had dead spider guts on my tires. Or shoes. It’s gross from any standpoint. We’ll get them off. Okay?” One-handed, she sent the whole page of glyphs for ‘clean.’

Slowly, he began to back up.

***

It was nearly three before she had finished scrubbing spider paste out of Optimus’ wheel wells. He went off to the garage to spend a couple of hours to clear his file fragments and Kim retreated to her room in the human dorm. She slept late the next morning, and found an ‘orange tree’ warning on the calendar when she checked it over breakfast.

Mearing was coming.

Well, okay. Kim had….nineteen minutes before Bee Bridged in with her from France. That was time to brush her hair and make some tea to take out onto the balcony. Pierre had moved in the week before, and he’d brought a French press to make coffee and an adorable swan-shaped tea pot to furnish the kitchen. Kim could be civilized.

Bee let Mearing out at the stairs. She had two fancy paper shopping bags rather than her usual briefcases. Since Hot Rod was currently up and racing back and forth on his little wheels, Mearing stayed on the steps. The baby was taking turns lifting up his feet and balancing on three or two or even one.

“Does he ever stop moving?” Mearing asked.

“When he sleeps,” Kim shrugged.

“Have they imaged him? I mean can we see how he’s put himself together?”

Because, right, Mearing had been a mechanic. “I’m sure they have. But look. He usually slows down after half an hour or so, and then we can go down and talk to him.”

It was shorter than that. They hadn’t finished their tea before Hot Rod came up to the steps and called up, “Humans do ball. Request ball.” He was holding out the ball Raf had left.

This amused Bumblebee, who was watching from the corner, but Mearing snatched up her bags and rushed down. She seated herself on the next to bottom step so they were at eye level, and held out her hands. “Hi, I’m your Aunt Charlie. It’s nice to meet you.”

His camera stalks extended. He looked at her curiously. He _chr-rp_ ed

May I see the ball?” she asked.

He set it on the ground beside her feet. “It is good to observe the ball. It is better to play with the ball.”

She picked up the ball. “How do you want to play with the ball?”

“You must throw it. I must stand over there.”

They played a few rounds of catch, and then Mearing called Hot Rod over. “I have other balls. Do you want to see?”

“There are _other_ balls?” His emphasis was volume. Mearing blinked in surprise, and then reached into the bag and produced an inflatable ball with a nubby texture.

She held it out. “Now listen. The texture on this is different, and you might like that. But it is more fragile than the ball you are used to. If you break the surface, the air will come out and it will go flat and floppy.”

“Ball change?”

“Yes, it will change into an uneven disk.”

All of Hot Rod’s legs had gone straight and rigid. He scamper-hopped backwards and over to Bee, who had pulled in all his antennae. Kim checked her phone. He was yelling over the radio, but Kim couldn’t make head or tail over what. Mearing was frowning. Kim shrugged.

Hot Rod hurried back. He tapped his front feet excitedly. “Unliving. Unliving _and_ changing.”

Mearing held it out. Gently, Hot Rod took it and bounced it. Because of the nobs, it didn’t bounce straight, but shot off to the side. All of Hot Rod’s legs stiffened again and he hopped backwards. “Query. Query. Anomaly.” He raced over and retrieved the ball and held it up on one servo while his optical sensors looked at it from slightly different angles.

“He’s…doing math really fast,” Kim guessed.

“I would say,” Mearing said.

Suddenly, he tossed the ball off toward the far wall. It bounced wildly to the side, but Hot Rod was waiting for it and caught it neatly in the air. Again. And again. He shot the ball off and caught it in whatever improbable direction it ricocheted to.

He got bored with it fairly quickly. Apparently, it hadn’t taken him long to set up an algorithm for the shape. His communication wasn’t subtle, but geez. The kid could do math.

“Here,” Mearing said, reaching into the bag again. She held up a stuffed dog.

Smoothly, Hot Rod popped down his wheels and skated over. “Hmmm.” He said. “Sonar scan indicates that will not bounce well.”

“It isn’t a ball,” Mearing said. “It’s another kind of toy. For holding and touching.” She frowned at the plushy, possibly reconsidering, but Hot Rod gamely picked it up in two servos and poked it with a third.

“Fuzzy,” he said after a moment.

“Yes, it’s soft.”

One of the ‘rear’ servos unfolded a slim tactical sensor that stroked the toy. “Fuzzy. Soft.” A pause. “Aunt Charlie soft.” The single finger reached out and ruffled Mearing’s hair. “Soft.”

Kim tried to breathe calmly. Hot Rod was _so_ strong, and added into his innocence and awkwardness, it still might be dangerous to physically interact. Mearing didn’t seem worried. “There are lots of things to touch,” she said. “But next time ask before you touch humans.”

“Ask.” He tapped his own leg joint. “Not fuzzy,” he announced.

“Smooth,” Mearing said. She tapped her fingernail. “Smooth.”

She had a lot of toys in the bag: a snow globe of the Eiffel tower; a towel with a puppy-face; a toy car with wheels that spun—and oh, that was a hit; a picture book about going to bed; and a small toy remote-controlled robot, which Hot Rod immediately cracked open and began to disassemble.

“Oh, hey, no. Hot Rod, do not incorporate any of those components into your own body permanently,” Mearing said sharply. “Those aren’t good enough. They won’t hold up to your stresses.”

Hot Rod looked imploringly at Bee and Kim. “No way, Kiddo,” Kim said. “Human technology isn’t good enough to modify yourself with. If you see any parts you like, you have to copy them.”

He poked the robot sadly. Kim whispered to Mearing, “What did you think he’d do?”

“Radio control it. Like a…peripheral. Kids like remote control toys.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a wooden duck with oblong wheels and a string, so that as you pulled it, it seemed to walk. Hot Rod turned the duck over and over. “What is this material?”

So then they had to explain trees and wood, and after about three minutes all of his legs went straight and tight—and then he ran back to Bee. There was another long conversation, this one loud enough for Kim to hear, although she didn’t really understand it. There weren’t any modifiers or intensifiers in what Hot Rod said.

Eventually he came back. “How are trees made?” he asked.

Mearing winced. Kim said, “We have some on base. I’ll take you in a few days. You can see for yourself.”

Hot Rod wriggled. Windblade arrived, then, and gathered him up for a nap.

“Dear god,” Kim whispered.

“I…was not prepared for that.” Mearing said.

“No. He’s. Damn.”

“Yeah.”

Kim wiped her hands on her jeans. “So. Yeah. You staying for _Rocky Horror_ tonight?”

“Heh. Actually, Bee and I had volunteered to babysit this evening. So the others could go.”

“Oh. Wow. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

They were silent for a moment. Kim said, “Want to see the renovations?”

“That…would be nice. I hear you have a kitchen now.”

~TBC


	2. Exogamy

Optimus stopped by midafternoon with a patio-potted olive tree which he presented to Hot Rod (along with its care file) before breezing off to a meeting in Washington.

The whole thing was just unbearably cute.

Kim slipped off for a nap. Staying up for a midnight movie was one thing when she was a sophomore in college. It was totally different nearly a decade later. Geez.

They held the showing in Building E. Unusually, the bots and humans were firmly segregated. Optimus has put his foot down on the safety issue: there was no way to assure human safety if the two groups were combined during The Time Warp.

Schedules had been tidily shifted around so that nearly everyone was there. Bee was babysitting, of course. And Optimus had offered to monitor the security feed and Bridge. And Arcee was off investigating an anomaly in Kamchatka. But the others were all there, even Chromia. She had left the linguist settled in his apartment at dinner time and come home for a few hours rest and the party.

Or weird human ritual. Actually, most of the mecha didn’t seem at all clear about what was happening.

The humans—most of Ratchet’s medical staff and about a third of NEST deployables and support staff—were on catwalks, safely above the mecha gathered on the floor. Kim had brought her folding chair. And a blanket, because the nights were getting chilly, and Building E was drafty.

On the floor below, the mecha sat carefully in very earnest rows. There weren’t seats, and normally they would have watched in alt, but—obviously—vehicles could not participate in the ritual. They were stiller and quieter than a human audience would have been.

She settled in and tried not to worry. It would be funny, right? Bunch of aliens shouting “slut” and “asshole.” They had a list of motions and call backs, and they had props. According to Hound, most of the Autobots had not thoroughly researched the movie before seeing it. They had been assured by Private Wallis that it was something that could only be experienced, not read about. But as soon as it started, they would be googling references. And there would be questions tomorrow. In the excitement over the new baby, she had mostly forgotten to worry about the movie showing. But now that it was starting, all the problematic moments were coming back to her. And—

Oh dear.

Kim _liked_ the theme song, but she couldn’t guess what the aliens would make of it.

At the wedding, the ‘Bots went old school and threw rice. Well, not actual rice. Birdseed was clearly a more ecological choice. (It could be swept up and left for the birds over by the watering hole on the other side of the firing range.) But they made up for the small adjustment by tossing the grain with such enthusiasm that it bounced off the ceiling sixty feet up and came down in a stinging hail of broken seeds. Kim shook the bits out of her hair.

And then the proposal scene and all _that_ heavy-handed symbolism. Maybe…you could just read that scene straight. The imagery wasn’t exactly subtle. How far would googling ‘American Gothic’ get them? Goodness, what would they make of this?

Kim had not thought about this _as a movie before_.

Okay. Restrictive norms, yes, that would resonate. The emptiness of social conformity. Alienation from genuine connection. Those themes would make sense, but could mecha even get there through the human, culture-specific layers of weird? The medium for communicating universal themes was so particular: sex and gender—and mecha had neither. Mecha didn’t have lust or physical modesty or baggage about desires that were ‘dirty.’ Their pleasure wasn’t about what they did with their bodies, anyway. They wouldn’t recognize rock and roll as the devil’s music. And then there was all the death symbolism. Mecha didn’t think about death the way humans did. This was going to seem so mad, so bewildering…..

 _They’re going to decide we’re crazy._ They wouldn’t be wrong about that. But that wouldn’t help.

The movie (ritual) kept on going. Kim winced. The criminologist surely only made sense if you were British. Or had read a lot of Foucault.

A fog rose in the room—and then formed into fat drops of condensation. Oh. Right. The rain.

Kim pulled out her ‘newspaper’ (actually a real estate flyer from town) and held it over her head. She would have to ask how they were deploying the water. This was nothing like a squirt gun…. The twinkling sparkles from the array of tiny running lights—mecha usually had a few extra, in addition to signaling lights standard on cars—filled the room with a rainbow of pinpoint lights.

And then RIfRaf opened the door to Brad and Janet. And—geez, would they get the trope? Would he seem creepy, with pale skin and stringy hair? Or were wet, salty, squishy human bodies already so creepy it didn’t matter?

God, what kind of questions was she going to get tomorrow?

And was Kim going to be able to answer them? Was she sure she got it herself? Really? She was born about fifteen years too late to resonate with a story about how it was ultimately impossible to defy gender and sexuality norms. The first half of the movie was a wonderful unpacking of taboos and transgressions. But to her it had always seemed that the end went off the tracks. It had always seemed to her that the bit with the aliens was just thrown together because nobody involved could imagine an ending, in the early 1970s, where people could reject society’s rules and live happily after. Or even _live_. The restrictions—violently, incoherently, inevitably—reasserted themselves.

Kim didn’t live in that world. The ending had never made sense to her. She lived in a world where you could defy and protest and rewrite evil norms. Where happy-ever-after was possible. Life could be beautiful. People could be free. They weren’t always. It was a fight, and too often you lost. But you could at least imagine winning. And sometimes you did. Sometimes you got to be exactly who you wanted to be and lived. It was possible.

Well.

Possible, except everything ended, after the end. Happily ever after, until you died. And everybody did. Everybody died eventually. And that was a bad ending, no matter what came before. No amount of being who you were or getting what you wanted would erase the grief—

The ‘Bots were standing up and getting into position to Time Warp. Kim reached up to grab the catwalk rail in preparation for a dozen giant aliens to take a jump to the left. Her other hand was pressed over her mouth, because she crying and couldn’t keep the sobs in otherwise.

It had been years since she’d seen this movie, but she remembered now. In the end you lost everything. The return to ‘normal’ was inevitable. The grief squeezed tears out her eyes.

The Time Warp shook the building so much the metal walls creaked. The crash and thump of mecha dancing in ways they were not designed to dance—

Kim gripped the rail.

The catwalk was vibrating, too, rhythmically, with the humans standing up and dancing on both sides of her. Kim’s hold on the railing was so tight her fingers hurt.

She wanted to slip out and make the long walk to ‘Bot country. She didn’t. She leaned against the rail and watched the mecha below watch the movie. There was no way to take notes in the dark. She would have to remember. And that would be hard, because now she only felt numb.

It had been easy, with the distraction of the new baby and all the stress of the Autobot parenthood experiment, to avoid thinking about the war or Optimus’ plan for ending it. But she was thinking about it now and—

Oh, bloody hell, Janet was singing a song about _touching_. God damn it, that was going to lead to awkward questions.

***

Kim spent Sunday alone in the dorm. Pierre was working. Carly and Maggie had gone to Las Vegas to shop for furniture, and Kim—

Did not want to go anywhere or talk to anyone. She napped. She tried to watch Netflix. She cooked—there was real food now, in a full-sized fridge, perogies in the freezer and onions on the counter and Fixit had poked at them thoughtfully with a single digit.

Fixit had a mech schedule—of course. But he had arranged the details so that when Maggie was sleeping he was either working or recharging himself. In the evenings, he came back to the dorm with Maggie. Kim would return from her meeting on the mesa to find them playing scrabble on the balcony or rewiring the lighting or sitting in Maggie’s room with the door open watching Alien Nation or Star Trek with Pierre.

As roommates, the were okay. The nice couple across the hall.

Pierre was quiet. He barely seemed to be there even when he _was_ there, but he almost always worked late and sometimes he still slept on an active pallet if Ratchet was working overnight. A lot of Ratchet’s—well, not ‘mellowing,’ obviously, but, perhaps slight ‘relenting’—toward humans had been because of Pierre’s careful, humble, earnest dedication to his work. Pierre handled injured mecha so gently. He was patient and thorough cleaning out wounds. He always asked when he was unsure identifying some component—despite Ratchet’s scathing impatience with human mistakes.

None of that had gotten Ratchet’s attention until the Decepticons detonated an electromagnetic wave in the atmosphere to (probably?) increase Earth’s energon output or (possibly, but Kim hoped not) stimulate the growth of Dark Energon. The EM interference had overloaded the Ground Bridge, and when Ratchet attempted to contain the system failures, a shunt had exploded, discharging a surge of electricity and spraying shrapnel everywhere. The damage to Ratchet’s protomatter was serious but not immediately life-threatening. The slice to a main energon line had nearly drained him out.

Pierre—the only human nearby who had any mech medical training—had rushed in and saved him with duct tape and a back-up power supply until the trainees had arrived with a repair kit. Ratchet hadn’t been conscious for this, but he had accessed the security video afterward.

He had seen Pierre gasping with pain as the hemorrhaging energon splashed above the short gloves, soaked his sleeves, and burned his arms. He had seen Pierre continue working. And after that, he had related to all the humans a little differently but Pierre—Ratchet seemed to have a genuine affection for Pierre. But that, combined with Pierre’s diligent work ethic, meant that he spent very little time in the dorm.

Bobby Epps was still Sergeant Epps, so he wasn’t offered a room in the dorm, which was ‘Bot country. He stayed over with Carly a lot, though. Kim assumed they were sleeping together, but the walls were thick, and they were up the hall, so Kim (fortunately) didn’t know for sure. When Ironhide could schedule it, he took Carly and Bobby off-roading. The two humans were fond of one another, but it was clear to Kim that they were both much fonder of Ironhide. Which totally made sense, because ‘Hide was way cooler than most humans Kim had met.

And it was good. Ironhide had time on his hands now. Or maybe not ‘time’ so much as ‘bandwidth.’ He had been the Prime’s bodyguard since (to put it in human terms) the Byzantine Empire, and now he wasn’t. It was good that life on Earth brought friends who cared about him and new viewpoints he could explore.

So life in the Cold War corridor was very different from when Kim first arrived. Slipstream and Max had the double office beside the kitchen, with a Dutch door installed so that they could open the top and be social without Max running out and escaping. The lights were brighter, and the hallway walls were painted in a _very_ fashionable blue-on-blue colorwash (Fixit had carried color swatches around for two weeks before deciding). There were other people and a kitchen, and the bathroom was very comfortable.

Kim stayed home Sunday and cooked and ate and then napped and cooked and ate again. She had the perogies. And chicken wings. And onion rings because Fixit had installed an air fryer.

While she was washing up, Steeljaw sauntered in. Their whiskers twitched thoughtfully, and their toes clicked on the floor. “It doesn’t look quite like the human habitations in movies,” they said, looking around the kitchen.

“Real life doesn’t. But those reality shows about houses out of weird renovated spaces might be close. Have you come to visit Max and Slipstream?”

“I have already made their acquaintance.” Rattling toss of mane-sensors, swish of tail, delicate settling onto haunches. “A curious life form.”

“Very elegant and dignified,” Kim said. She wasn’t sure where this conversation was going.

“Do you think so?”

“Yes. But my species likes to look at cats. Just sample youtube.” She placed the last dish in the drainer with a stab of anxiety; Steeljaw was a handful. This conversation would be better if she had an activity to deflect with. Kim took the sponge and began to wipe down the stove.

“Impossible not to notice. Still, observing life forms directly is quite different from watching low-resolution images.”

“Oh, no,” Kim said quickly. “The pet experiment stops at one until we have a better idea how things are going. No more cats.”

Their whiskers flipped backward in a scandalized grimace. “Certainly not. My assignments don’t allow me to expend enough attention for such a high-maintenance biological sample. Still…. There are other ways to interact with Earth life.”

Kim didn’t want to ask. On the other hand, if Steeljaw was about to act on a bad idea…someone should probably find out about it. She braced herself. “Like…settle into a swamp and watch the alligators swim by? Or sneak into a zoo after hours?” Mecha had done both. It hadn’t ended in discovery or injury to wildlife. Maybe Steeljaw could take a hint.

“Funny you should mention reptiles,” Steeljaw said, lying down and crossing their front paws. “They require a congenial environment, but need caretaker maintenance only about once an orn.”

Kim wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. She went to the sink and rinsed out the sponge. “Reptiles. No. You can’t have a pet alligator. I don’t care what you’ve seen on the internet.”

“Alligator, my goodness,” a theatrical shudder that made the mane ripple elegantly. Kim reminded herself that—accent aside—Steeljaw was definitely not a forty’s movie star and that all this was affectation. It did not help. “I was thinking Burmese python. I could put a terrarium in the commissary. Hollow out a shelf in the wall—are you frowning? You’re frowning.”

“We’re at a pet hiatus,” Kim said firmly. “When we know how the current experiment works out—”

“It makes sense, not having more little mammals scurrying around. They get into things. They might get lost or damaged. But a terrarium is a closed environment.”

“Why are you trying to convince me? It isn’t up to me. You have to convince Jazz and Springer. And even if they say yes, Optimus can still say no—”

“And they won’t say no if the Earth lifeform expert tells them it’s a good idea. It’s what you’re here for.”

“Not snakes. I don’t know anything about snakes. I housesat a snake once. It ate crickets. That’s it—and a Burmese python won’t eat crickets! You’re going to have to cope with…live mice? And why a Burmese python anyway?”

“Florida has an excess of them. Scads. Invasive species cluttering up their delicate wetlands.” They lifted and examined a clawed (?) front ped. “I’d be doing the local wildlife a favor, taking one of them away. Don’t you think?”

“I think you’ve been here about a month and you might take a little longer before you take responsibility for an exotic pet.”

“That is not a coherent argument against my little plan.”

Kim sighed. “No. It’s not. Just make it clear that _you_ are cleaning out the cage and _you_ are feeding it.” Dang. Well, at least Kim would not have to go to the snake pound or whatever and be the personal shopper here. How big did Burmese pythons get?

Steeljaw stood up with a sinuous stretch. “Thank you. This has been a useful conversation. Is there any favor I can do you in return?”

“Nope. But I’ve got to change out of my PJs and put my shoes on because my evening meeting is still on the calendar. Thanks, though.”

It took about ten minutes to get ready and collect her bag for the evening interview. Optimus was waiting beside the balcony.

“Hey,” Kim said.

He bowed slightly. “Do you object to a change of venue tonight?”

Kim sighed. “Please tell me we aren’t going looking for more spiders.” And then she winced inwardly, because of course, if he was doing that, she would go.

“Never. Emphatically. I wish to inspect the alternate site, Diego Garcia.”

“Oh. Right. The kids are going tomorrow.”

“In fact, the group is bridging over in an hour, along with June, who will be staying for the first day. I…would prefer to make my assessment before Miko arrives.”

“Because you’re checking it for safety? Or because you just want it done before she gets under foot?”

He inclined his helm. “The second, I admit. She’s very….energetic.”

They bridged into a cave. Well, not a cave, Kim realized. The walls were flat and as smooth as ice. Each rounded corner had an identical arc. Autobot mining technology. Kim leaned forward to look up through the windshield. The ceiling was so far up the light from the light panels didn’t reach it.

The exit from the cavern was a gentle curve that sloped upward and then opened into brilliant sunlight. The light was green and there were palm trees—

Optimus dropped his windows down, and Kim could smell salt. It was cool and windy. She could hear birds—she assumed those sounds were birds—

She pressed back into the seat. “Oh, boy.”

“Kim? Are you all right?”

“Just a little startled. I’m not used to—what time is it here?”

“Approximate forty-five minutes after sunrise.”

“Woah. That’s….” Tomorrow morning? Or yesterday morning? She really ought to know. Kim imagined the planet spinning. “Wow.”

They were driving downhill along a dirt road that wended though closely spaced palm trees. Green, it was all so green—

And then it wasn’t. The road turned and the trees parted and there was a wide expanse of white sand spread out below—

Kim took a couple of deep breaths. “Woah.”

There was blue water on the other side of the sand, glittering under a cloudless sky. It looked like a postcard. Kim closed her eyes. A few minutes ago, she had been under ground in a dessert. She opened her eyes. Tropical paradise.

Optimus stopped at the edge of the beach and opened his door. Kim undid the seatbelt and slid unsteadily out. The sand was soft under her sneakers. Her lips tasted of salt.

“The American navy base is on an atoll three kilometers to the north. The camouflage field is in place, so we can start erecting above-ground facilities. What do you think?” Optimus asked.

Kim sighed. “I think it’s perfect. Between the sand and the salt, it’s the last place Decepticons will look, if we need to bug out of Nevada.” She glanced at him, but alt forms didn’t have much in the way of body language. “This is awful. You okay?”

A pause. “I have mods for sand clearance. My fuel mix is augmented for a corrosive environment.” He transformed smoothly, barely disturbing the sand, and lowered a servo to scoop her up. “Kim. Are you disconcerted by the Bridge distance?”

She was high enough to be looking down on the smaller palm trees. “No,” Kim said.

“But you are unsettled.”

“You don’t like beaches.”

“You do.”

“I.…” She did like beach vacations. She did not like vacuuming sand out of mech coolant systems. “I like you more.”

“Ah. It is not a choice.”

“You…redacted those memories.”

“I did. I dislike sand, but only that. I am not distressed to be here.”

Kim _mmmm_ ed noncommittally.

“And it is not a hazard to be here.”

Kim turned away from the water. “’Kay.” She managed a smile. “I have to admit, it’s better than spiders. So where will the kids be staying? Are they setting up camp in the excavation?”

Optimus considered for a moment and then sighed. “They will be tenting near the construction site. We’ll check that next. Unless you wish to spend more time examining the beach.” He shifted so she was facing the water again.

Because she liked beaches. Well, hell. “Actually, I’ve always wanted to see Ethiopia.”

“Always? Or since you started researching arid, landlocked climates?”

“You following my internet activity?”

“Conjecture.”

“Hm. The Andes are also cool. But I’m not sure about the roads. “

“I see. You have given this some thought.”

“Well. Yeah.”

“You do not need to limit yourself to the most mech-friendly environments.”

“Okay. What do _you_ want to see?”

“An octopus. But we don’t have the resources for that sort of indulgence at this point. Perhaps—”

Perhaps later. When the war was less pressing. But for Optimus, there was a ninety-three percent chance there would _be_ no later.

“Why don’t you show me where we’re building the base,” Kim whispered. “You can tell me all about it. I bet we’re bringing in parts in by Bridge—that’s going to make construction fast.” She cleared her throat. “Will the kids actually be able to help? Or are they just here to go swimming?”

“It would be good for Jack to become more acclimated to mecha. I also wished to give Brawn a few days to watch Bulkhead and Wheeljack interact with Miko. That Wreckers find a human a worthy companion might go much further towards convincing him of human kinship to us than words.”

“Sly,” Kim said.

“You disapprove?”

“Of course not.”

They left the water and sand behind and climbed back up the rough hill. Kim could see why the military hadn’t wanted it before—The rock was granite and steep and there was no place for an air strip. The building site was terraced out of the west side of the mountain—old volcano?—that made up almost all of the island. Autobot tech again—the ground was smooth as a poured floor and disconcertingly warm. They must have finished recently.

It wasn’t a single flat spot or a tidy set of terraces. There were seven different benches, each large enough for a mech-sized building and two smaller ones that might hold supplies or human-sized facilities. There were two roads carved into the hillside and a set of mech-sized steps. “This is actually going to be…pretty,” Kim said.

“Lower your expectations. We are using prefabricated military construction.”

“Oh. Well, still. It’s nicely laid out.”

“I am pleased you approve.” He sounded amused.

“Hey, I go where you go. And it’s nice. But I’ll be hoping we don’t need to.” She could still taste salt in the air.

“Indeed.” He sat down at the edge of one of the terraces and lifted Kim up so she could shift to his shoulder. It seemed definitely less pointy than usual. It took a moment to settle in, seated in a slight curve, one arm looped around an armor protrusion.

“It’s very quiet,” Kim said, trying not to gape at the palm trees.

“The first phase of the project was relocating the animals. Carving out the pads caused some disturbance, and those near the perimeter fled. Carson expects that when the construction is finished, they will return. And once the buildings are anchored in the granite, we will able to return soil and do some landscaping. We have a five hundred year lease from the British government. We may do as we see fit.”

Kim blinked at that. This was very elaborate. “Five hundred years….is way longer than the war is going to be. But not a long time for mecha.”

“This is a temporary measure. In five hundred years, we project our primary colony will be on Mars.”

“Oh. Right.” Mars: hardly any water or oxygen, salt wouldn’t be a problem…. “Mars is great. Not a lot of life there.”

“Our human colleagues, we hope. A great deal depends on the next few years.”

“Yeah….” Kim sighed and groped for a change of subject. “Speaking of wildlife, Steeljaw wants a snake.”

“A pet? I will not allow animals hazardous to humans on base.”

“I think that part’s okay; humans keep pythons as pets.”

“Ah. I have seen the memes. What is your opinion on the results of the current pet experiment?”

“Well….Slipstream is an attentive and responsible pet owner. Obviously. And I think having Max around has made his current assignment much less isolating and boring than it would be otherwise.”

“It was a duty we had been rotating. Slipstream has served three terms now.”

“He…acts like any other first-time pet owner. If I didn’t know—I mean if I read about his adventures in pet ownership online, I wouldn’t guess he was an alien.”

Optimus hummed softly. “Sort of a Turing test for animal care.”

It took a moment for Kim to parse that, but when the meaning sunk in, she sat up sharply. “Not that. Never. Of course not—”

“I am not offended. Who better to judge pet ownership than other humans? But it would have to be a blind analysis to be accurate. Instagram and Facebook, I think.”

“Oh. Okay. Um. Yeah. Miko’s been saying we should be getting Max some exposure.”

“Slipstream must do it himself, if we want an accurate measure of the similarity of his experience.”

Kim scoffed. “Harsh, dude, making the poor guy do social media. Brutal.”

“He already has three accounts.”

Kim froze. “He….what?”

“Slipstream has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal.”

“Oh, my god. I’m not following anyone on social media.” Kim twisted to the side and leaned over to rest her forehead against this helm. “Crap. Crap, crap, crap. How many accounts do you have?”

“Twenty-three. But only seventeen are in English.”

“Oh, _well_ then.” Kim sighed. “I suppose everyone has several.”

“Most of us have several, yes. Ratchet has none. Brawn has none. Arcee has none. Drift has only one. Bumblebee has a hundred and six, but he lurks on most of them.”

“Crap. And they’re all under pseudonyms, of course. Jeez. How am I going to keep them straight?”

“I will give you an algorithm.”

A smile tugged hard at Kim’s lips. “You are too kind to me. Social media. Dang.”

“I apologize. I should have mentioned sooner.”

“Nah. I’ve had plenty to do.” Kim took a deep breath. “Don’t worry about it. And you don’t have to give me your feeds. You get boundaries. Everybody gets boundaries.”

A pause, and then, “I will need a moment to research that. I’m not sure why you would classify social media as anything other than a public….Hm.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me _you_ don’t know all about social media. Bee was here when it was invented.” She was speaking very softly—she was close to a sound input. Her forehead was still resting against him. The etched metal of his helm was growing slightly warm in the sun.

“What I know is quite different from what I understand.” He stilled. “There are literally thousands of military topics that are inappropriate to discuss with you. But none of them are subjects that I would publicize on Human social media. I don’t….Do you assume other humans have so much to hide? And is the motive for hiding shame? Or fear of punishment for secret transgressions?”

“I assume there are things a person has a _right_ to hide. And it is really unfair to expect someone to be perfect.”

“Ah. And you would allow this, despite our intimacy? Surely, if I am imperfect, _you_ have a right to know.”

“Well, that’s just wrong. On so many levels. And I’m pretty sure ‘perfect’ is a conceit of sentience, or something. You’re not perfect, and I’m not going to judge you. _And_ I don’t have a right to know everything you want to keep private.”

“Whereas I have accessed your entire digital history.”

“I’d be annoyed but,” Kim shrugged, patted the curve of his helm. “Alien. And the private stuff isn’t on the web. Well. Maybe you could extrapolate it. Mathematically. But I’m not sure your algorithm can predict what I’m going to say next.”

“I was seventy-three percent sure you would have changed the subject by now.”

“Yep. Humans are exhausting,” Kim said sympathetically.

“I assume the reverse is also true.”

“Truthfully, ethnography with mecha isn’t worse than ethnography with humans. People are exhausting.”

“I cannot imagine choosing your profession, feeling that way….”

“I _like_ people—”

“It was not a criticism.”

“It’s important that people understand each other.”

“I agree,” he said tolerantly.

“I like people.”

“Kim. You canceled two meetings today. Ratchet says you haven’t left the Human habitation all day.”

Kim snorted. “I was up late last night. I haven’t cooked in forever—and an interview isn’t just talking to people. I have to _do_ things to the field notes. I’m not even sure you understand—“

“You have to redact and elaborate files you keep outside your body using only a primitive manual interface.”

“Oh. Yeah.” That was it in a nutshell.

“Kim… you could stay here with the children. If you needed a rest.”

“No. Hell, no. One-B could hatch any moment. And I don’t want to be….half the world away from you.”

“Yes. Your lack of internal radio makes distance more difficult.”

Kim laughed and turned a little so that it was her temple resting against him.

There was a soft protomatter hum. “I expect the limitations of my tactile communication makes affection more difficult for you.”

Kim lifted her head. “Right. Is this weirding you out?”

“I will allow you to dodge the issue if you prefer.”

Right. Of course he would. Kim sagged. “I…really don’t know what to say to that. We’re figuring this out as we go.” Her hand came up, splayed against the etching pattering his helm. Yes. Hell. Even now, when they were talking about it, _humans do touching_. “You’re not human. I don’t want you to be human. I don’t want you to say what humans say or do what humans do.”

“Needs are not entirely a matter of rational choice.”

“I don’t need—” _I need you alive_. That wasn’t fair. “I don’t know what’s going to work for us. Right now, my brain is floating in a pond of oxytocin.”

“I see. In your opinion, is your brain chemistry outside of the normal range?”

Kim forced a laugh. “I’ve been in love before. This is normal.”

“Is it painful? I have wondered, reading human literature….”

“Not this part.” Kim considered. How honest should she be about this? “We obsess over this part. We kill and die for this part. That sometimes isn’t an exaggeration.”

“Yes,” he said. “For love.”

“Are…you okay?”

“I am.” The protomatter purr was so quiet Kim only felt it because her head was resting against him. “The construction party has arrived. We may as well go.”

“What else do you need to see?”

“Nothing. We are finished.”

Monday, Kim came out to the balcony early. Carly and Ironhide had already gotten out the large Jenga set and were using it like building blocks while Hot Rod watched. The baby mech was perched on one of the foot-wide wooden pillars and was running a chemical sensor back and forth over it. Kim approached slowly and asked, “What does that smell like?”

Two optics stretched out toward her on their eyestalks. “Weird. Why is it weird?”

Kim glanced at Ironhide, who answered, “It’s made of wood. Amazing material. Very strong, considering its constituents. Like your tree over there.” He flashed a laser pointer on Hot Rod’s potted tree, which was under a grow-light in the corner beside the satellite interface.

“Tree,” Hot Rod muttered. “Tree.” His feet tapped against the wood. “Wood. Want to see more trees. Woods. Forest? Wilderness?”

“Not just yet,” Kim said. “When you master yourself and this environment, we’ll take you some place more complex.”

The sensor stalks retracted slightly. In meticulous movements Hot Rod stepped off the Jenga pillar, turned it on end, balanced it, and then climbed it, balancing perfectly so that it didn’t tip. He reached the top and stood on one foot. “Tree,” he chirped.

“That’s impressive,” Carly said.

“Yeah,” Kim conceded. “But it’s not up to us.”

The peal of the Decepticon contact alarm shattered the peace of the assembly area. Hot Rod squawked and tipped sideways, but before he could crash to the floor Ironhide snatched him out of the air and set him down beside Carly. “You two take the baby into the dorm and stay there until this is over. Go. Hurry.”

He transformed while turning and roared away down the tunnel. Carly patted Hot Rod and started toward the steps. Kim brought up the rear, wishing they were moving a little more quickly, but Hot Rod was unsteady and kept trying to look in all directions at once. He tripped several times on the steps, although he had climbed them before.

At the entrance to the hallway he stopped. “Not allowed,” he said.

Carly turned back just over the threshold and bit her lip. “Roddy, who is in charge of the human dorm?”

“Xenoethnographer,” he answered.

Carly pointed at Kim. “That’s her. Well? Baby in?”

Kim glanced at Carly. “There’s a lot of stuff in there he isn’t used to. Maybe the ‘Bot commissary?”

“If we get breached, most Decepticons couldn’t fit through the door.”

“Baby in!” Kim said. “Scoot!”

Hot Rod hopped through the door and began to examine the corridor. He ‘tasted’ the floor and the wall with his chemosensor. He tapped on the doorframes and poked the doorknobs.

Kim and Carly looked at each other.

At the far end of the hall, Slipstream stepped out of the cat habitat. “Oh, good. You have him.”

“Yeah, but where’s Max?” Humans were the only animal the sparkling had seen.

“Max’s duty station in an emergency is a steel-reinforced cat carrier.”

“Oh. Good….”

“Hot Rod, have you seen a bathroom?” Slipstream came down to greet them. “You’ll like it. There is water.”

Kim’s phone began to vibrate insistently. She took it out—“K. MONTGOMERY REPORT TO GROUND BRIDGE IMMEDIATELY.”

What the fuck? “Um,” she said. She held up the phone where Carly could see it.

“Go. Run. We got this,” she said.

Kim ran.

After half a year in huge bot spaces and the maze of underground offices and facilities on the Human side of the base, Kim was a champion power walker. Running, though? That hadn’t been a thing since her breasts grew in half a lifetime ago.

She was already panting as she passed the infirmary where Ratchet and Pierre were frantically setting berths. She had a stitch in her side by the time she turned the tunnel curve. When the passage widened out into the debarkation area she stumbled to a halt in the threshold and leaned against the wall, gasping.

She could see Fixit and Maggie in the little control alcove set off slightly to the side. There was a squad of Human NEST commandos coming in from the other side, thickly buried in equipment and body armor. One of them saw her and pounded over. He was in her face before she recognized Will Lennox. “What the hell, Indy! Get out of here!”

Kim shook her head. “I got a message—”

“If a—”

He was cut off by the chime that indicated a Bridge was being initiated. Snorting in impatience, Major Lennox shoved Kim behind him and trapped her between his body and the wall. As the pool of pink light swam into focus within the hoop, he raised his weapon—

The surface shimmered and Ironhide came roaring out at speed. His tires thundered over the grating and then squealed against the stone floor as he braked hard. His aft end swung around, and the passenger side door flung open.

In a blur, Fixit raced forward, and snatched something bulky out of the cab before scooting back behind the console.

“Well?” Ironhide shouted, “Whatcha all waitin’ for?”

The NEST team was already running. They managed to fit six in the cab and five more piled into his bed. As Ironhide lifted slightly to turn on a single wheel, Kim’s stomach lurched to imagine going through a Bridge riding on the _outside_ of a mech. Humans only saw blackness inside the span—

And then they were gone, and the pink light raced up and down the spectrum as the Bridge collapsed and—

Kim glanced down at her phone. There were no new instructions. Still panting, she staggered over to the control console. Maybe Maggie knew something.

There were three people there: Fixit, at the mech interface, Maggie at the back-up station, and somebody else behind them at the auxiliary communications panel. But that wasn’t a NEST guy. It was Kim’s new linguist.

“Oh,” Kim said. “Shit.”

It had taken a moment to recognize him because his face was mostly obscured by hair, red and white dust and chunks of—rock?—distractingly covered his clothing, and a long scrape on his arm was bleeding a little. He had taken off his glasses, but could not seem to find a clean spot on any of his clothing to wipe them.

Kim squeezed in past Fixit and sank down on one knee between the front and back consoles. “Okay? Dr. Chase? Are you all right?”

He pushed his he hair out of his eyes and blinked at her. “Where’s Chromia?” he stammered.

Fixit answered, “Chromia is still deployed in combat.”

“Not a helpful answer, Possum,” Carly murmured. “We’ve got back-up on the way. I’d say it’s going well, but if we don’t end this quickly… this will be the event that outs us. What’s that spike?”

“Decepticon Ground Bridge opening at Washington and Faculty,” Fixit answered.

Kim made herself turn away from them. The linguist was staring at Fixit. Kim lifted a hand into his field of vision. “Chip? Are you injured?”

“Somebody brought me here. How did—”

“Yeah. We were going to explain that later. You’re in Nevada. It’s safe here. Ironhide and the army are helping Chromia.”

He blinked at her, looked at his glasses, groped at his clothing—

Kim gently took the glasses from his hand, blew on the lenses, and then wiped them on her own T-shirt. She passed them back.

“Oh,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Dr. Chase. Chip. I need to know if you’re hurt.”

He held up his arm. “I don’t think this is bad, really.”

“Have you hit your head?”

A shrug.

“Does your head hurt?”

“Um, no? No.”

“Okay. That’s good.” Kim glanced around, made a long arm, and snagged Maggie’s thermos from the low shelf beside her purse. “So, this is turmeric chai. It’s really awful, but don’t judge; Maggie’s Australian.”

“Oi,” Maggie protested absently.

Kim opened the drink bottle and placed it in Chip’s hand. “You need to drink something.”

Obediently he lifted it and swallowed. He tried to hand it back. “That’s really bad.”

“Yeah. But it’s liquid, and she puts honey in it. Drink. More.”

He lifted it again. His hand shook a little. _Oh, dear god, what am I going to do with him?_

He drained the bottle and handed it back, fumbling a little. “You’re my boss,” he said.

“Yep. You’ve arrived about a week early. Welcome to NEST.”

He took a deep breath. “I was in Princeton.”

“Yeah. I was going to explain when I came to get you and escort you in. There is this science fiction thing called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Ours is really short range.”

“Okay. Yeah. I’m not crazy.”

“No. You’re not crazy. Are you injured?”

He shuddered. “I really don’t think so. That guy who brought me here—”

“Ironhide. He’s gone back to help.”

“He came through the wall—oh, my god. It followed me. It came into the building! It was so small! I thought they’d be—big—like Chromia and—It had _teeth_. Why does a mech need teeth?”

“That would be Ravage,” Fixit said. “You were very lucky Ironhide arrived in time.”

“Ravage….” Chip whispered, trying to get his breath.

Kim tried not to shudder herself. She had seen images of Ravage. Like Steeljaw, but matte black and spikier. No. Joining him in a freak-out was not productive. “I need to get you out of here.”

“I can walk short distances. I’m not very fast.”

Kim thought of the quarter-mile walk to ‘Bot country. No. She got out her phone. A human medic might be a good start. The master calendar showed the one on duty was in Princeton. Right. And June was still on an island in the Indian Ocean and Dr. Nomura was in Japan, and the Bridge was restricted to direct combat use. There should be a duty nurse in the infirmary over in human country—

The phone rang once and then the calendar image dissolved into fractals. “Hi, Boss,” Kim said.

_“There is a flag on the calendar function. Why are you looking for looking for human medical personnel?”_

“We’ve got Chip. He’s probably not hurt, but we need a professional. Also, I should get him out of the arrival area—”

_“Ratchet is coming to retrieve you both. Lieutenant Lester is being dispatched.”_

“We’re—probably going to need a wheelchair—”

Chip shook his head. “It’s in pieces,” he mouthed.

_“Understood. Out.”_

Kim put the phone back in her pocket. She could already hear tires in the tunnel.

***

Ratchet deposited them on an active pallet in the infirmary. For mecha, the surface was malleable and had a little give. To humans, it was almost hard. Chip poked it thoughtfully.

“How are you doing?” Kim asked him.

“I…don’t know. I feel like I could give you a better answer about the head injury if I hadn’t just seen an ambulance turn into….? Anyway, is this place really _weird_?” He motioned to the huge open space full of large, alien equipment. “I feel like a toy.”

Kim thought back to the first time Ratchet had scooped her up and plopped her on a shelf. “Yeah. It actually is really disorienting. This is the infirmary. Ratchet is the doctor.”

Chip glanced over nervously.

“Oh, don’t worry. He doesn’t work on humans.”

“Certainly not!” Ratchet said. He was about thirty feet away, laying out tools on a table. “I don’t have the training to be a veterinarian. Nor the interest.”

“Well….” Kim said, reconsidering. “You could scan for broken bones. I mean, that is safer than X-rays, right?”

“Practicing medicine without a license is a crime on your world,” he returned tartly.

“We really need you not to be an arse right now,” Kim said. Something in her was growing hard and angry. And perhaps Ratchet heard that, because he returned to the active pallet and looked down at them for a long moment. His chin tilted up slightly.

“Oh, boy,” Chip muttered.

“’S fine. Humans can’t even feel sonar. It does annoy the cat—”

“The strut system appears to be made of slightly sub-standard materials, but it is not currently broken.” Ratchet’s affect had gone very flat. “Seven of the major joint arrays appear to be undergoing…I can only describe it as very inefficient repair. Unless this is some sort of microorganism attack?” He leaned slightly down, optics carefully on Chip.

“Uh, no,” Chip answered. “It’s not an infection.”

“Hmp.” Ratchet stared at them for another moment, then briskly returned to his preparations.

Chip looked down at his scraped arm. The blood was drying now. He poked it and sighed. “Maybe now would be a good time to tell you—”

“You don’t owe anybody your diagnoses,” Kim said automatically.

He blinked at her. “Seriously?”

Kim swallowed. “Oh. Right. Okay.”

“It’s a connective tissue disorder. The…joint arrays… get swollen. My balance isn’t great when I’m tired. I can walk short distances, but when I fall, I tend to dislocate things. And if I fall hard things break. You asked if I was injured—frankly when the adrenalin was flowing, I felt a lot better than usual. Right now, everything hurts.”

Kim nodded. “What else do I need to know?”

“I’m going to need my prescriptions from my apartment. My chair is in pieces—My apartment was right next to campus. Is the building even still standing—? All my stuff was packed—”

“Woah. Easy. As long as the Bridge is working, we can get anything from anywhere as soon as the combat is over. Uh. Well, not original artwork or your favorite hat or whatever. I mean, if the building is…well. But just regular stuff. We can get that.” She sighed. “The bots can totally hack the pharmacy to get the prescription names. All the pharmacies.”

“Oh. Right. Big Brother has a magic hole in the universe.”

“How soon do you need the medication?”

“Tonight would be good.”

“Okay.” She would text Optimus. It would go on someone’s _to-do_ list.

Lieutenant Lester, the nurse who had replaced June when she had been permanently reassigned to mech repair, arrived in a golf cart driven by an armed guard. Which must have been because they were currently in active combat. She climbed—nervously, Kim thought—up the ladder to the pallet’s top and, with only a few uncertain looks, began doing nurse-things with Chip.

Kim withdrew to the other side to give them some privacy. And take a minute, because, _shit_. What a day.

When you came out of the Ground Bridge, if you took the tunnel on the left, you entered ‘Bot country. There was actually a narrow sliver line painted on the floor showing you were leaving the military base and human jurisdiction. The Non-biological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty made provisions for alien embassies, little plots of land that that were—more or less—legally Cybertron and subject to its laws.

But now there were humans living in ‘Bot country. And Kim had been put in charge of them. She had never wanted to be to be in charge of anybody. She watched people and took notes on them. She was the outsider, watching people solve their problems. Not—

Shit.

Kim sighed and sat down at the edge, her feet dangling over the side.

***

When Lieutenant Lester was finished checking over Chip, Ratchet gave them a lift onto the balcony. That was surely forward progress, right?

The doors were shut, but not locked. Kim led Chip into the hallway, which was much brighter now, with full spectrum LED bulbs.

“Uh. Are you hungry? Or…want a shower?”

“A shower would be a good idea. I don’t have other clothes.”

 _Right. The small things are hard today_. They found Hot Rod in the first shower cubical with a cup, a sponge, and a trickle of water. Carly and Slipstream had retreated to the other side of the room, not quite out of the splash zone.

“Sorry, guys,” Kim said. “We have to give someone else a turn with the bathroom. Have…we seen what humans keep in their cold box? Very interesting stuff.”

“Oh, my God,” Chip whispered, gripping the door frame hard. “Who is _that_?”

“Oh. Yeah. I forgot to mention. That’s Hot Rod. He was born last week.”

“There’s… a baby.” His eyes were huge in a suddenly much paler face. “It’s a baby mech.”

Right. Linguists and babies. “Yeah. Let me introduce Hot Rod, Carly Spencer, and Slipstream, who is coordinating our feline experiment. They’re dorm-mates. Well. Not Hot Rod. This is the first time visiting.”

“Nice to meet you,” Chip murmured, eyes still on Hot Rod, who delicately reached up to turn off the water, collected his cup and sponge in one appendage, and retreated gracefully on four legs.

The baby mech’s eyes stretched in several different directions as Carly began wiping him down with a fluffy towel. “Hold very still. It would be a mess if you pinched the towel in a joint.”

Of course, told to hold still meant the little mech quivered like a dry leaf in a breeze. A few times he chimed melodiously.

“That…isn’t a phoneme,” Chip murmured.

“He’s echoing his sonar off the tile walls,” Kim said.

“My god….”

Kim herded the others out and took a towel down from the shelf for Chip.

Clothes were the next issue. Kim caught Carly in the hall. “Does Bobby keep any extra scrubs here? In case of wardrobe incidents?”

“I have a set for Dr. No, too. I think they’d be a better fit.”

“Great. Fantastic. See? Things are going well. After that, you should head down the infirmary.”

“Wounded coming in?”

“I have no idea.”

Kim headed to the kitchen to find some frozen pasta or something to feed the linguist once he was clean. And after that---well—his room was done. That was something. Kim had hit an Ikea in Sacramento with Hound and Bulkhead about two weeks before, and Fixit had assembled the furniture. The room looked like had come straight out of a catalog. 

Of course, attacked by Decepticons before actually even officially starting—or even coming in to work—was not an auspicious beginning. He might quit.

He might. But he had seen a baby alien. Would Kim have quit? With a baby alien right there? And he had spent the better part of a month with Chromia.

Kim would not have quit, but this man might be different.

When he had retreated into his quarters with the nuked frozen dinner and Dr. Nomura’s emergency scrubs, Kim checked on Hot Rod. He and Slipstream had (more or less) folded up into spheres and tucked themselves in beside the washing machine at the back of the kitchen. Kim assumed the baby, at least, was asleep. So that was fine, he’d sleep for four to six hours, and Kim—

Really should go back out and find out what had happened.

***

From the left-hand, back corner of the balcony, Kim could look down into part of the infirmary. There were wounded there now. Chromia was on a medical berth, motionless. She was attached to an array of medical lines, but not open. Pierre was crouched on the berth beside her, speaking softly, and Carly was at the monitor.

A third of Arcee was laid out on an active pallet, the other two parts coordinating to pull curved spikes out of the damaged unit’s sensor array. Was performing surgery on yourself weird? Did she do her own pain management?

Ironhide had a set of jagged ribbons ripped out of his side. He was leaking, but not badly. And not all energon. Something orange and slick was pooling on the floor beside his left foot. It couldn’t be too bad, though. He was still upright and standing to the side instead of on a berth.

Where was Ratchet? Kim came down off the balcony and crept around the corner.

At the yellow line, she had a wider view. Ratchet was working over Springer, who was opened up on an active pallet. June and Dr. Nomura were using their small human hands to reach in and pull out ruined cabling and wires. Kim was glad Ratchet had his assistants—and, of course, the emergency must be over for the Bridge to have brought them back.

Kim stepped up to the line. “Anybody need help?” She asked softly.

For a little while it was up-and-down ladders bringing people things. Comfortably within Kim’s skill set.

Then Carly coaxed Ironhide down onto a medical berth, and she needed a hand clearing out the jagged edges of his torn armor.

Even as the berth was positioning him, he was still protesting. “Maybe you shouldn’t. I’m still running kinda hot. There’s no rush. I’ve got the leaks isolated.”

“And stressing those systems by running combat protocols is just what your repair system needs. Come on. Couple of humans crawling all over you will calm things right down.” She handed Kim the tool kit and clambered onto the berth which was set nearly to floor level since Ratchet wasn’t working on the patient yet. “See? Area secure. Everything’s fine.”

“Yup. Until you come at me with a molecular saw. How about we—”

“Hush now. Stop. I’m performing my function. Engage your safety overrides.” She climbed over his arm onto his shoulder.

Kim waited for the clicks and thumps of weapons disengaging and the sigh of capacitors powering down. None of that happened. Kim said loudly, “Clever. He’s in a med bay and you’re a medic. He has to obey you no matter how junior you are.”

Still nothing.

“He’s being thick about it,” Carly said. She slid down his shoulder onto the strut beside his helm. “Is this where I demand an embarrassing story?” He didn’t answer that. “I have to get you ready for Ratchet to do the real repairs. You’re going to make me look bad.”

“I apologize.” And there went his nonverbal pack: the flat, emotionless delivery betrayed the depth of feeling he refused to convey with tone.

“Chromia is going to be okay,” Carly said. “It’ll take some time to clear the waste. She’s miserable. But she’ll be fine. That human linguist you retrieved is fine. Princeton is secure. And in a few minutes Kim is going to bring me a molecular saw and I will be armed and able to protect you—”

He clicked startled laughter. And then came the softer clicks as his wrist cannon folded away. And then, finally, the sigh of his capacitors coming down and the snap of his ‘face’ armor retracting. Awkwardly, Carly hugged his helm, cupping her hands briefly over infrared and sonar sensors.

Carly propped a tablet against a hip protrusion and said, “We shouldn’t need a hard line for this. But I’d like your telemetry over wifi.”

“And you’re the boss,” he drawled.

“That’s right!” The answer was sassy enough, but she checked the readout carefully before nodding and motioning Kim up with the tool kit.

Carly worked slowly. For each of the armor tears, Kim would grip a tip of torn metal with long needle-nose pilers while Carly cut the jagged bits off to leave a smooth edge Ratchet could knit back together with a mesh tool. Cutting armor wasn’t fast to begin with, but Carly was also being every exact about each slice, with only the bare minimum excised on each short section.

Ironhide’s outer armor was thick and surprisingly heavy, but Kim could see through the gaps that it had mostly done its job of protecting what was beneath it. Only at the center of the strike had the –claws?—dug deeply enough to do real damage.

At first each thin ribbon of metal had thunked against the bottom of the plastic bucket as Kim dropped them in. Then they clanked against the others as the bottom was covered. Then, as the pile grew deeper, the clanks turned to muffled crunches.

As Carly made the last cut, Ratchet came over. He bent down and ran a scanner over the work. “Acceptable,” he said.

“Are we replacing the lines? Or repairing them?”

A sigh. “Repairing. You know which tape to get for that.”

“No,” Ironhide protested, speaking for the first time since Carly had started working. “I need to get back to work.”

“We need the reserve supplies more than we need you on duty this _orn_.”

Ironhide answered in Cybertronix. Kim only understood the cursewords of his protest. She winced.

Ratched ignored him. “Kim, Optimus is at the balcony with the general. He’d like a report.”

“Oh. Right. I’m done here.”

“We will somehow manage without you.”

Kim decided not to take that personally. Ratchet was always more of a snarky asshole when he was repairing people. _All things considered, I should just be glad he isn’t crazier._

Kim checked her watch. Trimming the twisted edges of Ironhide’s torn mesh had taken more than two hours. It hadn’t felt that long, but Kim was stiff all over and her arm was sore from gripping the pliers so tightly. She trudged back around the curve of the old missile silo headed toward the balcony steps.

Or maybe she'd take the new elevator, just to try it out--

Hound came zipping around the corner, passing close and whirling to a halt directly in front of her. “Oh,” Kim said. “Hi.”

Ford bounced out of the passenger side door, grinning tiredly. “Got a delivery for you, Dr. Montgomery. Fresh from New Jersey.”

Kim straightened self-consciously and tried to look keen. “Oh. How nice. I’m assuming not radioactive or anything?”

“Certainly not,” Hound said indignantly.

Ford was removing suitcases and paper boxes from Hound’s back seat. The final item was a bulky, blanket-wrapped….something that he put directly into Kim’s arms. “Food’s in the box with the X on it.”

“Food?” This had to be Chip’s stuff, but surely he hadn’t expected to bring his own food--?

There was a shuffling noise. From inside the packet Kim was carrying. Kim tugged the blanket aside and found a narrow-gauge metal grid. Kim squinted into the dim interior. A tiny eye glinted back at her. “So… that’s a bird,” she said.

“Yep,” Ford said. “Pet eagle.”

“It is a budgie,” Hound said. “They are not similar to eagles.”

“Anyway, there was a bigger cage,” Ford went on, “but it wouldn’t have fit, and taking it apart would have taken—”

“Right. Of course.” Kim said. “You’ve all been very busy. I appreciate your bringing this in. Did you get the medicine cabinet?”

“The small suitcase.”

“Thank you.” Kim looked back into the covered cage. The bird was still there.

Hound transformed and lifted the baggage up onto the balcony. He had a little antenna pointed at her the whole time—the mech equivalent of the side eye. Kim sighed and carried the bundled birdcage up the stairs.

General Morshower and Optimus were standing as close as the balcony arrangement would let them, talking quietly in the corner closest to the entrance to the mech commissary area. Kim plodded resolutely toward them, but stopped short of intruding.

Report? What would she even say?

The general turned toward her and said in more normal tones, “I hear the new consultant is fine.”

“Well, he’s in one piece and he hasn’t quit, yet. I think that is all we could have hoped for.” She glanced up at Optimus. “How did they find him?”

Optimus sagged slightly. “They did not. They found Chromia. There was a minor failure in her fuel system. The energon leak was minuscule. But the Decepticons are looking for energon.”

“So you’re telling me it was bad luck?” Kim said.

“Chromia was in one area for an unusually long time. There are many reasons why we randomize our patrols.”

“This isn’t all bad news,” Morshower said. “It looks like Laserbeak was watching Chromia for several days before acting. We’re collecting data from all the radio stations and cell towers in the area. It’s possible their communications interact with ours in a way we can identify—if we know to look for it.”

“Oh. Good. But if they were after Chromia—”

“You are worried Dr. Chase is compromised. We are checking his digital records to see if anything might have caught Decepticon attention. I assume his association with Chromia is the source of their interest, however. It is possible he was only targeted as a hostage. When they separated it took several minutes for suitable back-up to arrive to pursue him. Whereas, if he were a primary target, they would have been prepared to take him into custody from the start.”

“I guess that’s…something. They know who he is now, though—”

The general smiled. “And he is here!” as thought that settled it. Well. Maybe for him, it did. He turned briskly back to Optimus. “I have a meeting with the president. Congratulate Chromia when you speak to her.”

Kim waited until he was gone before turning around and hissing, “Why is he so happy? We’re _out_ now. Princeton—”

“Was the victim of a chemical spill that caused extensive damage to property and induced widespread hallucinations.”

“Class was in session. Everybody on that campus had a camera—”

“Which Chromia disabled as soon as she spotted Laserbeak.”

Kim thought about that. “Oh. But.”

“We are as we were before, a conspiracy theory. As long as that continues, Earth’s governments will not be pressured to move openly against Decepticons. And as long as _that_ continues, the Decepticons will not provoke them with open attacks.”

“What was Princeton?” That attack had seemed pretty open. 

“A miscalculation,” he said, sounding very satisfied. “They thought a lone Autobot with a predictable routine was easy prey.” He stilled. “Chromia is a BAMF.”

Kim almost laughed at that. But, no, none of this was funny. “How bad is Princeton?”

“Seventeen humans injured. Five million dollars in damage to the Marquand Library, an art museum, and a gymnasium. Washington Road is impassable.”

“How badly is Chromia injured?”

“It is not an injury…precisely. When Wildrider and Thundercracker moved on her, she disabled her safeties, over-amplified her defensive shielding, and grappled.”

“I can’t even imagine that.”

“The feedback fried their shielding, and then she started discharging her weapons. From the recording, it appears Wildrider is unlikely to survive his injuries.”

“But what about _her_ powersystems?”

“All the regulators will have to be replaced. However…all of the safeties were disabled. Including fuel regulation. In order to generate the power she needed, Chromia burned artificial fuel indiscriminately. There is considerable waste build-up. It is…likely she will be able to clear it without aid. In a few orns.”

“Oh.” Kim digested that. “It’s not allowed, is it? To disable safeties.”

“For most mecha, it is not possible. And yes, it is forbidden.”

Kim closed her eyes. What question should she ask? “Is it painful?”

“Some,” he said. “Waste build-up is…distressing.”

Kim nodded. “’Hide gonna be okay?”

“Yes. He understands—she was trying to limit the damage. They will not quarrel over this.”

Kim nodded again. Optimus shifted slightly. He said, “You are carrying a bird of a species non-native to this continent.”

“Yeah, apparently I’m curating a menagerie now. Or managing a zoo. Yay. More earth life.”

“You are unhappy.”

“I signed up for humans. Well, I signed up for mech. I guess humans are a necessity. This is complicated.”

A sharp click of laughter.

“What’s funny?”

“Well…humans automatically come with three to five hundred different kinds of intestinal flora.”

Kim opened her mouth. Shut it. “Yes, you would find that funny.” She signed. “I should probably take Chip his stuff--” She froze. “Were you in combat today?”

“I was. Belatedly, and briefly. My opponent fled almost immediately.” 

“So no damage?” 

He shifted awkwardly. “There is some shrapnel in my left ped. A trivial problem. I am on the schedule for repairs tomorrow afternoon.” 

Kim nodded, firmly not thinking about Decepticon weapons aimed at Prime. “Tag me in the schedule so I know when.” 

***

“You didn’t mention a bird,” Kim said when he opened the door.

“It didn’t seem right—when the whole town might be flattened.” He blinked and glanced away.

“It’s not. Chromia…managed to limit the damage.”

He froze. “Is she alive?”

“Oh! Yeah. She’s….She’s down for a few days. But—” Kim looked away. But she wasn’t leaking energon or hydraulic fluid. Or overheating. Or brutally disassembled. Or no longer able to _quite_ repair injuries. But Chip had seen none of that, and how could she explain mech suffering? “Chromia defeated multiple opponents, limited collateral damage, and made sure her injuries would be…survivable.” Unless she had turned off her safeties because she had assumed she’d die anyway? Kim bit her lip. “Chromia doesn’t even like humans very much.” 

Chip glanced at Kim, then away. “She’s thousands of years old. I have no idea how she relates to us at all.”

Kim blinked, feeling a sudden rush of warmth. “Yes,” she said. “ _Thank_ you. That keeps me up at night.”

He glanced at the bundle Kim was still clutching. “Can I, um?”

Kim unwound the blanket and yes, there was a handle under there. Kim passed it over. “I’ll bring the other stuff in.”

He was looking at the bird. It was a dull, bleached-out blue. “The cat stays in the cat habitat, unless she’s on a leash. Generally. But. You know. Don’t let the bird out.” 

“There’s a cat habitat?”

“Slipstream is a conscientious pet owner.” Kim couldn't think of anything else to say. About anything. 

~TBC


	3. Enculturation

Kim had happily moved her food to the kitchen. After half a year of cooking in her room, it was a tremendous luxury to have another room just for food. She found Chip already up and pouring cereal into a bowl. 

“Hey,” he said, waving at his breakfast. “I hope this is okay.” 

Kim blinked. “Yeah. Great. Eat what you want. We keep a shopping list on the fridge. Write down what you want. When somebody goes shopping--” Carly, mostly now, because it was an excuse to go with Ironhide, and last time they’d gone to a fancy grocery store in Las Vegas, and geez-- “they show the receipt to whatever ‘Bot is driving and the money comes back to their account.”

Chip frowned. “That’s...generous.” 

“Well, NEST gets their food at the DFAC. And mecha eat centrally. When it was just me….” she shrugged. “Ethnographers eat whatever they can pack into the field, right? At least according to the research they’d read.” 

“Why did the other humans move in? Chromia mentioned it was new.” 

“The babies. Of course. Prime wants them living with humans from the start.” 

“Babies? How many are there?”

“There will be two. When One-B decants.”

“Huh.” He thoughtfully munched cereal. Kim put water on to boil and got out the instant oatmeal. “Who are the parents? Do they have parents? Or are they built?” 

Kim made a face. “They could be built. But that is sort of child abuse. They build themselves.” 

He was watching her with wide, startled eyes. Perhaps Kim needed to explain more. “You know like… the folk-Catholic idea of the Well of Souls? Well, they have a generator of souls. They generate a soul and give it raw materials and some..useful parts. And a baby grows.”

“Ritual? Or just...whoosh, baby?”

“Short ritual. Six to eight weeks in a...don’t say ‘egg,’ it weirds them out.”

“Huh. So it’s here, on Earth? The thing that makes….” 

Kim pictured it, floating out Optimus Prime’s chest cavity. “Yes.” 

“So….everybody here....?”

“Everybody here...what?” 

“Was born like this?”

“No. There used to be three.” How could Kim even begin to explain this? She hadn’t even turned in a report on it. “One was destroyed. One just stopped working. And there’s one here. And that’s it.” 

“No parents,” he whispered. “That is actually...you’d think a soul generator would be the hardest part to imagine. “

“Well. It takes a village.” Kim shrugged. “There used to be professionals who specialized in the baby stage of things. Now they’re...doing their best. As you saw, Hot Rod is everybody’s darling. Oh. Hey.” Kim darted back to her room, returned with a notebook, nearly full. She flipped to a page and passed it over. 

“Allspark, Matrix, and...Vee Sum?” he read out the headings. 

“Vector Sigma,” Kim said. “The one on Cybertron.” 

“Why do some of them have footnotes?” 

“The spark was, uh, transported by another mech for a while before being...grown into a baby or placed in a shell. It’s complicated.” So, so complicated. 

Chip laughed suddenly. “It’s kinship diagram! They’re giant, alien mecha who don’t have parents, but you got a kinship diagram anyway.” 

Kim wrinkled her nose. “Since there are always literally only two generations, I don’t feel like I deserve a lot cred for that.”

“No, you win anthropology. You got a kinship diagrams for aliens with no parents.”

“Now, wait--”

“Really, though. Ethnographer: kinship diagram.” 

“I didn’t do one in Boston,” she protested weakly. 

He was already leaning close to the chart, fingers running over the paper. “Are they like clans? Or families, even?”

“No. I can’t think of anything affected by how you’re born. Well, _from which_ doesn’t seem to matter much. The how...it makes a difference, how much resources and time are provided, at the beginning.” 

“So, no family then.” 

“I don’t know what they’re like, when they aren’t crammed into a tiny military base on an alien planet. They form relationships, even here, under very artificial...circumstances.” 

The water was ready. Kim poured tea and oatmeal. Maybe, now that there was a real kitchen, she’d indulge and put five-minute oats on the shopping list. 

“Changing the subject,” Chip said, tapping the arm of the wheelchair, “I found this outside my door this morning. It's the same model. With the same modifications. It is identical to the one I left in pieces, in a library, in New Jersey.” 

Kim sighed. “Yes, they have hacked your medical records. All the stuff you’d have to tell the federal government to get a security clearance? Optimus knew more than that before you finished the test.” She turned around and looked hard at the chair. “But they didn’t have to use that to get this. At least two of them saw it, and all they had to do was match the picture from memory to a catalog. Big brother has eidetic memory to go with the teleporter.” 

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. No privacy. Right. Well, really, there isn’t privacy anyway, anymore. And I guess I’d rather aliens know my personal details than advertisers.” 

“Your notes are private. Your files. And I don’t think the ‘Bots look at our internet trails, but the army might have ways. I’m not going to say it indirectly--our reports are for NEST consumption. The secrets of our informants are not.” She thought back to a very abbreviated search for surgical trauma and was very glad she hadn’t needed more details after all, because there really hadn’t been another way to get them. ”And that includes what could be extrapolated from our internet searches.” 

He raised his hands. “I’m just learning the language.” 

“You’re living here.” 

“And there are mecha….living in the human dorm?” 

“Well, Max lives here. Slipstream wanted a pet. And we couldn’t just put her free range in the mech spaces--” Kim stopped. Considered. “Okay, so that big atrium with the Bridge where you arrived? That is joint NEST authority. I mean the ‘Bots own the bridge, but military chain of command in the embarkation area. There is a little red line at the other doorway--not the one we used, the one on the other side. That part is the boundary of human country. Mecha can go part of the way there--well, the small ones can go back into the DFAC and offices and barracks and all. But they act like guests and follow the rules. Human, military rules. The other door has a little silver line. That is the important one, because this side of it is...an embassy, I guess. By treaty, it is legally Cybertron. The ‘Bots find that amusing.”

“So, we’re….” 

“The humans who live here work for--they get paid as consultants. Well, not me. I get paid by the US government, but I don’t have a human supervisor. That all just kind of...went away.” Kim closed her eyes for a moment. “I’ve never been...in charge of anybody before. Well, I had a TA once, but that wasn’t….”

“It’s not the same.” 

“No. I wasn’t even a resident assistant. But here in the dorm here, I’m the human in charge. I report to Optimus, but he has no interest in telling us how to...do stuff. Share the laundry machine or whatever. But maybe it won’t be hard. Everybody’s a grown up. I’m hoping...it won’t be complicated.”

He looked at her innocently. 

Kim drank some tea. “Anyway, two of Ratchet’s technicians are here. The other two--one is in the military, he deploys as a combat mech medic. The other is a spy for the Japanese. Which is fine. Japan is making reports to the United Nations and we want them to be accurate. We’re all cool about that, but it means he can’t live here. And Maggie. She’s been involved since the mech started coming in groups four years ago. Fixit will probably try to set you up with her, by the way. Since you’re in the right age range and have more education. I think you might make slightly less money than she does, but he’s pretty desperate. So. You might try to head that off by explaining ‘gay’ or whatever.” 

“You’re kidding?” he said hopefully. 

“I wish. Well, I hope. He might have gotten past that. He wants her to have a full and happy life, though.” Kim sighed. “He recharges here. In the dorm. He likes humans.” Oh, god, how could she explain Fixit. “He had brain surgery recently. The files are mostly re-integrated and he’s fine. But he’s...got a lot of bandwidth. He doesn’t take a lot for granted. He asks questions. He and Maggie talk a lot about math. You’ll need to ask him for lessons, their numbers are really complicated.”

“Numbers are supposed to be the easy part!”

“Easy.” Kim snorted. “Like imperial measurement.” 

“Well. They wouldn’t do that. They’re different, not crazy.” 

“They think imperial measurement is a sentimental number system for special occasions or topics we feel strongly about. They use base 2, base 10, base 8, and something calculated from pi, and only _sometimes_ is the kind of math they are using dictated by the fact of their really weird multigenerational physics.” 

“Oh, dear,” he said faintly.

Breakfast seemed to be done. Feeling a little bad about dumping all that on him so early, Kim gathered up the dishes. 

“And,” Chip said. “This is awkward, but I’m going to ask.” 

“It can’t be more awkward than their math.”

“The calendar app has me listed as “Human Dorm” all day. Am I confined here?” 

Kim made a face. “It took _me_ forever to find the assignments calendar. No, you can change your schedule. I just assumed you wouldn’t want to work today. You don’t have to work today.” 

“You’re kidding. Yes, I-- Where can I go?” 

“Anywhere you want--shit, nowhere by yourself!”

He nodded. “Secret military base.” 

“You don’t know about the yellow line. Half the settings in the wash rack are toxic chemicals. Oh, dear. Maybe Ironhide is up to a safety tour. I know he won’t be deployed today.”

“Huh. Yeah,” Carly grunted, dropping a notebook on the little table and stumbling over to the coffee maker. “Anything you can think of to keep him busy. Please.” 

“He’s okay?”

“The medic safety tour didn’t include a weapons demonstration. Did yours? Or a high speed chase? I assume--?”

“No.”

“Good to go then.” She made coffee grumpily, looking neither left nor right. 

“So, Chip, that’s Carly Spencer, one of Ratchet’s students. Carly, this is Dr. Chase. He’s going to speak Cybertronix for us.” 

Carly, now digging through the fridge, looked over her shoulder and grunted, “Better you than me.” 

Kim shrugged apologetically. “I take it you haven’t gotten a lot of sleep?” The only answer was the slap of sandwich ingredients being piled on the counter. Kim stepped back, eyes falling on the notebook Carly had abandoned on the table. “That’s a weird--that’s not a spark diagram.”

A sigh. “No, it’s chemistry. These are the molecules fucking up Chromia’s protomatter. Half of them are plastic. And they’re sticky. A few have to be cut into pieces before they can be removed.” 

Kim swallowed. Trying to picture plastic molecules glomming on to protomatter made the oatmeal she’d just eaten seem like lead. “She has high-end nanites, though.” 

“High-end combat nanites. They’re maximized for repairing physical damage. We don’t even have any of the other kind on base,and making nanites from scratch takes a few days. And it can be dicey, in those older models. Changing out the nanite colony, I mean.” 

She had thrown together a sandwich and stepped over to eat it while leaning over the sink. “You’ll like this, though,” she said between chews. “Those plastic-cutting nanites? Standard for Fixit’s model.” Even around a mouthful of food she sounded a little bitter. 

Kim grimaced. On top of everything else against him, Fixit had been built to survive on a high concentration of inferior fuel. Lovely. Kim glanced at Chip and decided she didn’t want to get into all that yet. “Have you read everybody’s original manual?”

“They won’t let me see Optimus’. And we don’t have Springer’s. He’s supposed to keep a copy himself, right? Even if the medic doesn’t have a file. But apparently he had a reckless youth. But yeah, I’m reading manuals. It’s...slow.” 

“But...Chromia will be okay?” Chip asked tentatively. 

“She’ll be fine. Old model, but really well made.” The coffee maker began to sputter, and she set her breakfast on a paper towel to fill her cup. “It’s funny, you know? Ironhide seems like the dangerous one. He talks about explosives a lot and…and the enthusiasm. But Chromia? She’s some kind of commando. Seriously. She’s Rambo. Or that guy from Die Hard.” 

“Hard core,” Kim agreed. 

“You’re kidding,” Chip said. “Chromia is...soft and charming. Like Jessica Fletcher or any character played by Mark Ruffalo.” 

Maggie, already dressed in an elegant a-line skir,t came into the kitchen. “Sorry, mates. Chromia is McGonagall. But sadder.” Her attractive flats tapped against the floor. She was already dressed, hair tidily up and skirt looking ironed. She rummaged in the refrigerator and emerged with a hard boiled egg and a carton of milk. “Morning. Nice to see you again, Professor. Do you like us better when nobody is shooting at you?”

“Good morning, gate lady.” Chip said carefully. “Yeah, not getting attacked by aliens is an improvement. And Chip.” 

Swiftly refilling the electric kettle, Maggie produced her thermos and began washing it out. “Maggie. And ‘Bridge’ not ‘gate.’ And I should warn you that Fixit is all excited about having someone else to teach math to, but not today. Ratchet is about to drop from sleep deprivation, so he’s picking up an extra shift in medical.” 

“I know math. I minored in math,” he protested. 

Maggie chuckled smugly and continued making her weird tea. 

Kim patted his shoulder sympathetically and said, “Seventeen dimensions. They all have names, in addition to, you know, being numbered. And some of them have operations that don’t happen in regular dimensions. I got, like, the basics. It’s totally trippy.” 

“It’s why they don’t mind showing us the gate,” Maggie said. “We can push the buttons and read the warnings, but we don’t know how it works.” 

“She’s being modest, I think,” Kim said.

She had shifted from tea production to slicing up a cantaloupe. It was frightful, what a morning person she was. “When we rebuilt this one a few months back, was _I_ calibrating it? No. That was about four mecha, all hard-wired in, calculating for several hours. Kim. We can’t build this. We can’t even talk about all of it, or work the math using _any_ symbol system. When I really try, I get nightmares. Anybody else want some melon?” 

Carly and Chip both did. Kim didn’t, but accepted a slice anyway, because food was social. Maggie divided the remaining melon into plastic snack boxes and returned them to the fridge. “How’s Ironhide?” she asked. “He looked pretty rough when he came through yesterday.” 

Carly waved a hand. “Mesh damage isn’t a big deal. Telemetry says his repair nanites are right on schedule for the cut lines. He’ll be on full duty in a couple of days. HIs mood, on the other hand. Kim, I’m not kidding. If you can distract him today….”

Kim already had her phone out. “I’m putting in a request for the ‘safety tour’ this afternoon.” Ironhide’s affirmative response was immediate, but another notification came in so quickly that someone must have been watching the calendar for activity. “Ooops. I know what we’re doing this morning. Hot Rod found the calendar.” An appointment request was _blinking ‘_ Request to visit human habitat.’ Kim hadn’t even known calendar items could blink. “You up to baby mech, Chip?” 

*** 

Hot Rod wanted to play in the water again. Of course. Kim pointed out that there was water in the wash rack, just to see what he would say. What he said was, “your water sounds better.”

This was briefly mystifying, until he began bouncing noises off the bathroom walls. 

Kim and Chip retreated to the bathroom door. That was nearly out of the splashzone but did little to diminish the volume of the echos. 

“Remember to thank Fixit for the lovely tile,” Kim shouted. 

During one of the quieter phases, Chip leaned over and whispered, “His head is very...small. I mean cute.”

“He can hear you, but he’s not paying attention. And he probably doesn’t understand ‘cute’ yet anyway. It’s one of those things that is semi-hardwired in humans and weirdly exotic for them. And his head is small because he doesn’t have any memories to speak of to back up and his...eyes and ears and nose and things are on those whippy stalks instead of fixed in a reinforced shell.” 

There was a pause, then a careful question, “Where does he do his thinking?”

“In his torso, of course.” And when had _that_ become ‘of course?’ For a moment the utter normalcy of mech engineering took Kim’s breath away. She glanced at Chip. “Ratchet isn’t taking on beginners anymore. I’ll have to give you my notes. It won’t help you to learn the native words for body parts if you don’t know how they fit together.” 

“Great. Uh. Thanks.” 

Hot Rod was watching water drip from one of his appendages onto another. _We need a kiddy pool_ , she thought. _And tub toys._

When play-time was over, Kim carefully toweled off Hot Rod. “Your seals okay? No water in the circuits, right?”

“I cannot open my seals. I do not have control over my safety protocols.” His words were flat, but he added a put-upon sigh.

“And you’ll remember to drip out all the water in your seams, right? It isn’t good for mecha to stay wet.”

The sensors swiveled around to examine Kim closely. “Why? My inner seals are intact.”

Kim took a deep breath. “Well. Microscopic biological life lives in damp patches. You don’t want to have little creatures growing on you, right?”

The little cameras peered up at her. “Why don’t I want microscopic biological lives growing on me?”

Oh. Dear. Kim closed her eyes.

Chip said, “Microscopic life smells bad.”

The cameras shifted to him. “How can a smell be bad?”

Chip’s eyes widened. “Um. Right. Right. I don’t mean _bad_ as in _evil_ or _misbehaving_. Just unpleasant.”

“An unpleasant smell?”

Chip nodded. “Yes, that’s right. An unpleasant smell.”

“How can a smell be unpleasant?”

Kim gave them a sympathetic look. “Smell is just chemical analysis for them. Some smells indicate danger or have negative associations. But each sent is divided into components for them. And it isn’t really aesthetic.”

Chip bit his lip. Then he took off his shoe and held it out. “Unpleasant smell,” he said.

Hot Rod revealed a chemosensor on another whip-like probe. It delicately dipped into the space within the shoe. It stayed there for several seconds, the equivalent of a long sniff. Then the probe decisively withdrew. “You have microscopic biological life?”

“Yes.”

“I also wish microscopic life.”

It was almost funny. Well, it was almost hysterical. Certainly, the look on Chip’s face would burn in Kim’s memory forever. And the thought of Ratchet’s response if one of the precious babies started growing mold and algae like poor Cliffjumper had. What a melt-down that would be.

Kim cleared her throat. “Humans are biological life. We can’t avoid having microbes. But mech…just don’t.”

“Unfair.”

Kim wondered about the ‘fair’ stage with mech babies, when it started, how long it lasted, if they were about to have a tantrum on their hands. “We can’t help it. But humans have some things. Mecha have other things.”

“What do mecha have?”

This never ended. Alt forms, but Hot Rod didn’t have one of those yet. “Wheels,” she said desperately.

“Humans have wheels.” He turned all his eyes pointed toward Chip’s chair, and then sighed. “I cannot use my wheels in the human habitat. It is not permitted. You must be very skilled with your wheels, to be allowed to use them here.” One of the eyestalks seemed to droop wistfully.

Gently, Chip said, “I have a lot more experience with them than you just now. But that is going to change. Someday soon, you will be much more skilled with your wheels than I am with mine.”

“Would you like to see mine?”

“You’re scheduled for a nap now,” Kim said, relieved that the topic of microscopic biology appeared to have been forgotten. “Maybe later, though. Right now, we have to take you out to Ironhide.”

“Do humans nap?”

“Yes,” Kim said, following him to the doors. “A lot. But not in short bits. Two or three times an _orn_.”

“Yes. That is consistent with what Carly said.” But one of his cameras was pointed backward, eyeing Kim suspiciously.

After handing him off to Ironhide and breathing an inward sigh of relief, Kim turned to her new linguist. “So. Wanna see where the army is?”

He did, which solved the problem of figuring out what to do with him. They went the back way, thorough the mech commissary and storage and out the small door. “Remember Fowler from the interview? Down that hallway, last door on the left. In case you need the FBI. Records is on the other side—mostly paper, they keep to hard copy a lot. All those desks in that cavern are NEST support, including morale and activities. Getting involved with them is always weirder than I expect. Sadly, I can’t think of a reason to make you take a turn.”

“Morale is weird?” he asked.

“Events planning. Parties. Holidays. Halloween is coming up. The ‘Bots like to trunk-or-treat. They’ve been volunteering at local churches. The Army frowns on that, as you’d expect. So they’re doing it as a base thing, at a park on the north end of town. For base kids, but really anyone who wants to come. So the military can pretend they’re in charge.”

“I can’t tell when you’re kidding,” he said warily.

“Why would I bother kidding? I get—” But _did_ she really get how weird this all was, anymore? That happened in the field. It’s why you wrote the notes every night, every detail, every moment you could remember. Because after a while, you took it for granted. After a while, it became normal. “The military and the war, you know? That’s every bit as strange as space aliens. The ‘Bots are okay. And very patient about explaining things.”

It was crowded at the DFAC—lunch time. But it was a cafeteria, normal from an American perspective: people, trays, an array of average food. Ford was at the karaoke station singing ‘Hotel California,’ and two gunner crews were in line waiting behind him.

Lennox and Graham were eating at a corner table and waved them over. “Any word on One-B?” Lenox asked as Kim sat down.

“Not yet,” she said.

“Is it, like, past the due date?”

“It’s not like humans,” Kim said. “She’ll come out when she’s built enough of herself. Protomatter parts last longer and are more efficient.”

“Harder to replace,” Graham observed.

“The war will be over before she grows up,” Kim said.

“Wait,” said Chip. “What? Hasn’t it been going on for thousands of years?”

Kim looked down, suddenly aware that a quick victory should make her happy. “That’s what the math says. Not that I have checked it.”

Lennox and Graham both laughed good-naturedly at that. You didn’t argue with mecha about math.

Kim changed the subject. “What’s the fall-out from New Jersey?”

“They’re blaming old infrastructure,” Lennox said. “It helps that we’ve got three ‘Bots curating social media and the big email hubs.”

“Oh, God. That isn’t going to work forever.”

“Yeah,” Graham said. “This was a bad one. Hey, do you remember that mess in Shanghai that first year?” He turned to Kim. “We didn’t have the Ground Bridge then, had to fly the big guys in with cargo planes.”

Kim had heard this story, but she was content to let them reminisce for Chip, who hadn’t.

***

They took the long way back to ‘Bot country, past the NEST conference rooms, under the huge gantry where formal meetings and conference calls between very tall mecha and very small humans took place, and into the Bridge room. The staff was all human, at the moment, since Fixit was busy in the infirmary. Humans didn’t do calibrations or unsupervised maintenance, so Maggie and a coworker—tall, thin, suit, Kim couldn’t remember his name--were free to chat and show Chip around.

Kim stood back and sighed. She had had vague intentions of making the first day efficient and exciting. Or at least organized. But he was still here—and after yesterday, that was probably a huge win.

Ironhide was waiting in the assembly area, chatting with Eject and Strongarm. They were facing each other directly, which suggested it was an intense conversation. And complicated, since there was very little speaking aloud.

Throughout the introductions, Chip’s eyes were on the long, rough-looking temporary welds along Ironhide’s torso. Kim wondered if she should address yesterday’s combat or the injury—

But Eject stepped forward and interrupted: “Kim, maybe you can settle something.”

She blinked. “Okay. Sure. Human question?”

“It isn’t a _question_. Obviously. These two are trying to convince me that the point of the dancing Pictureshow Ritual is that humans enjoy dispersing and collecting reproductive nanopackets.”

Beside Kim, Chip squeaked ‘nanopackets’ followed by a soft gurgle. Kim glanced up at the distant ceiling. She could make out the plump shape of One-B’s pod in the shadows. She sighed. In all he excitement she’d forgotten about Rocky Horror.

Eject, Strongarm, and Ironhide were still looking at her, waiting for an answer. “Sort of,” she said, filtering honesty through what she could imagine of the mech worldview. “We’re supposed to be above base urges. Or at least feel guilty about liking them. That’s what the movie is about.”

“But the other part—humans actually _like_ …?”

“Yes. It’s very popular.” Kim had not actually had that particular conversation very much. Most of the mecha she knew had been pretty well acclimated to Humans before she arrived.

Eject’s chin tilted upward. “They got to you,” he said. “You’re in on the joke. This is human humor.”

Kim shook her head sadly. “If we were hazing the new guy, I’d pick something less embarrassing.”

“But it’s—I understand it is important. I can see why you’d make the best of it. But—you can’t honestly mean that reproduction is enjoyable,” Eject protested weakly.

“We’re obsessed with it. American culture more than most.”

“You can’t expect me to believe—”

Kim rolled her eyes. “What’s your favorite song? From contemporary American pop category.”

Predictably, Rascal Flatts floated out of the nearest P.A speaker. Kim took a breath, let it out. “What do you think that song is about?”

“Driving. Sensation of great speed. Excellent roads.”

Kim shook her head sadly. “It’s about sex. It’s all a metaphor for sex.”

“But—But—the roads are excellent—” Yes, it would make sense to sing about the quality of roads.

“And we _like_ driving. It’s great. That’s…why it makes such a good metaphor about sex.”

Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” replaced “Life is a Highway.”

Kim looked beseechingly at Ironhide and Strongarm. They regarded her in knowing sympathy. They had tried to explain. There was no help from Chip either. His face was buried in his hands. Kim straightened her shoulders and said firmly, “That one, too.”

“Shut Up and Drive” sounded almost tentative. Kim nodded.

The PA cycled through, “Poker Face,” “A Thousand Years,” “Hallelujah,” “Centerfield,” and “I Honestly Love You.”

Kim grimaced. “All the songs you think are about fun or friendship or joy…are statistically probably about sex or the emotional entanglements that our brains use to get us to… have sex. Maybe not Centerfield.”

“Surely, not—not _all_ of them? What about—the _sad_ songs?”

Strongarm snorted. Ironhide murmured, “It’s almost cute, how often they come back to that.”

“Nope. That is not applying ‘cute’ correctly.” Ruthlessly, she continued, “Sad songs are frequently about how we can’t have sex with the person we want to have sex with. Or how the person we want to have sex with is having sex with someone else.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There are some Sarah Bareilles and Josh Groben songs. And Pink,” Strongarm said kindly.

Gingerly, Kim patted Eject’s arm. “Our culture is mostly sex. According to Optimus, when it’s _not_ just sex, it’s loneliness, existential terror, or food. More movies about food than songs. But sex gets into all of that, too.”

“But why? It’s not… _anything_. You just… It can’t be fun.”

Ironhide and Strongarm looked patient. Chip was doubled over giggling silently. “It’s lots of fun,” Kim said firmly.

Eject’s antennae rippled. “You’ve done it?” he had dumped the language pack and was emphasizing with volume.

Kim nodded.

“Have all the humans I’ve met done this?”

“Yeah. Well, not the kids.”

Eject turned on his heel and stalked off determinedly.

“Where’s he going?” Chip asked.

“He probably needs to process,” Kim said through her teeth. “Safety tour. Enjoy the safety tour. I still remember mine fondly. Thank you, Ironhide.”

He lifted his hands innocently. “We tried to tell him.”

“Ugh,” Kim turned and headed the other way.

***

She had a few minutes before Optimus was scheduled to get—ew, possibly pieces of New Jersey—removed from his foot. Ratchet was in alt, apparently parked, in the corner. Carly was perched on the console, watching Chromia’s telemetry, and Dr. Nomura was at a table, doing something complicated.

He was wearing gloves and a thick apron, moving bits of metal around with tongs. Kim approached slowly, making sure she was in sight so she wouldn’t startle him. “Hi,” she said.

He nodded, picking up a lump or twisted armor in the tongs, swished it out in beaker of fluid, and then set it to dry on a glass rack.

“Dangerous?” Kim asked.

“A mild acid to clean them,” he answered. “They are slated for grinding into powder.”

“Oh.” Kim nodded. “Raw materials gel has to come from somewhere.”

He smiled suddenly. “Or perhaps it will be baby food. The sparklings will surely be creating new components. Sooner or later.”

“Hm. What do kids play with in Japan?”

“When I was a child, it was toy robots. Also, when my own children were young…” He made a face. “Our robots will not be entertaining to sparklings.” He dipped another chunk of metal, swished it in the fluid, held it up to drip. “Hot Rod is not yet ready for a kite. Jigsaw puzzles, perhaps. Not cardboard ones.” He set the scrap in the drainer and selected another. “We may have to special order them, with images of things in their own environment.”

“Won’t they solve that pretty fast?”

“A mech infant will not find the leap between three and two-dimensional images less radical then a human one.”

Kim didn’t argue: while she understood mech culture, Nomura had a better idea of what their processing hardware could do. “Puzzles it is.” She looked around. “How is everything else? Is Chromia awake?” Her spark graph was very active for a mech shut down for repairs.

“Unfortunately, yes. The clearing of her components is faster when not automated. But being awake to direct the process,” he shook his head and sighed before saying more softly, “it is uncomfortable. We are taking turns watching over her, but she has no interest in conversation.”

“Damn. And Ratchet can’t do anything?”

“Faster, perhaps. But not more pleasant, and it would be at a great cost of resources. If Ratchet were up to doing anything.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Still in emergency shutdown.”

“Still? But they usually only sleep for about six hours at a time.”

“He had not been able to run a full repair and redaction cycle for several weeks.”

“One-B.”

He nodded. “One-B.”

“Who’s handling her questions with Ratchet…?”

“Jazz, currently. Ratchet should be awake again tonight.”

“Fingers crossed,” Kim said.

He didn’t reply, only patiently swished lumps of metal.

Fixit rolled up with another pan of metal bits. “This will be enough for now,” he said. “The quality is high, so grinding this quantity will take several orns.”

“How does that work?” Kim asked.

“We have a machine. A small machine, not very fast.” He glanced at Kim. “Optimus is on his way. You will not need to position a table; I will be working close to the floor.”

Kim dropped her eyes. “Thanks,” she whispered. She did not glance at Ratchet, shut down in the corner. Fixit was _good_ at repairs. The customs that labeled him a technician not a doctor really were irrelevant. She straightened and asked firmly, “How will this go?”

He considered. “I am not sure how much detail to give you. You are inclined to be squeamish.”

Kim opened her mouth. She closed it. “I’m. Well. How do you even know what squeamish is? Is that even a thing for Cybertronians?”

“Not exactly.” His antennae were angled toward her.

Kim grimaced. “What does this procedure involve?”

“I must remove four steel-lattice fragments from his left ped-unit. They range in size from seven to thirty-one centimeters.”

Kim took a breath and tried not to look squeamish. Steel-lattice was a strut material. Optimus had shrapnel from someone else’s body stuck in his foot. “Sedation?” she asked levelly.

“No. The area is localized. Sensory input can be managed.” A pause. “If he needs help, my current processor is equal to the task. And, of course, removing the intrusions will go a long way to relieve the existing pain.”

Kim’s eyes narrowed. “He’s in pain now?”

“It would be unsafe to sever sensory feedback in a pedal array. Balance is very delicate, and a fall—” He stopped and regarded Kim somberly. “It was not a risk worth taking for short-term comfort.”

“Right,” Kim whispered.

“Now is a poor time to be squeamish.”

“Right. Yeah.” She took a breath. “Okay. Not squeamish.”

When Optimus arrived, he was not limping. Erect and graceful, calm and steady: show no weakness in front of humans. If this were not such a straightforward repair, he would have waited hours longer to do it in secret.

“How’s New Jersey?” Kim asked as he positioned himself against the medical berth and waited for it to lower him into position.

“Structurally….better than expected. However. Some of the conspiracy theories arising from the incident are very odd. I would appreciate your taking a look at them later.” The metal frame of the bed adjusted to his shape and then lowered almost to the floor.

“We settled?” Kim asked.

“It is safe to approach,” Fixit said. He and Pierre, carrying a case of tools and a folding human-sized table, were headed toward the foot of the bed.

The sneakers she wore for comfort on the long walks were also good for climbing. Kim scrambled up Optimus’ arm, scooted across his shoulder, and settled herself cross-legged over his spark chamber. “Afternoon,” she said.

“Agreed,” he answered aloud. Kim’s phone vibrated the arrival of a glyph message. :: _Gratitude_ , _Situation_ _normal_ , _Be_ _reassured_.

Skipping quickly through the glyph list, Kim sent back, :: _Respect_. _Confidence_. Then she hesitated over a choice. There were glyphs she had never used or even observed in conversation. She sent, :: _Affection_.

The protoform sigh that rose in response was a physical vibration.

“Hardline interface or radio telemetry?” Fixit asked.

“Radio telemetry, thank you,” Optimus said.

“You will need to cut the feedback below node seventeen.” Unlike Ratchet, he phrased his medical instructions as suggestions. Kim bit her lip. She had watched Fixit in the infirmary many times, and normally he was very decisive. Was he intimidated by working on the Prime? Or was this just a result of his new cognition?

“It’s important to set a good example,” Kim murmured, “and follow the advice of medical personnel.”

“Obviously,” Optimus agreed. “I am fortunate Fixit was available—” He went still. At the other end of the table, so did Fixit.

After a long moment, Kim whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“There appears to be a breach in One-B’s gestation pod.”

Kim’s breath caught. She twisted around, but the dangling pod wasn’t visible from this part of the infirmary. “Appears?” she whispered after a moment.

“We don’t have telemetry. However, the external cameras—” He broke off, sweeping his legs over the side of the berth and rising, Kim clutched to his torso. He lurched for a moment before getting his left lower leg under control and scrambled around the corner.

He stumbled to a halt under the dangling pod. Kim strained to the left to see past his chin. “Well? Is it open?” In the dimness above, the swelling curve of the pod was swinging.

“The breach is near the top—”

“Oh, god! Put me down! Put me down! You need your hands!”

Optimus took three quick steps to set her on the balcony and turned back. Kim peered upwards, searching for a shape or movement on the outside of the pod.

Hot Rod came speeding out of the exit tunnel, Raf clinging to his back with a basketball tucked under his chin. Bee came out behind them and shoed them up the steps. Ironhide—with Chip, chair included--in his hands, ran in from the ‘Bot commissary. As Raf and Hot Rod joined Kim at the railing, Slipstream hurried out with Max clinging to his head.

They all stared upwards, anxiously waiting. The casing was slack, now, and jiggling unevenly as a shape squirmed on the outside.

Optimus lifted his hands.

Nothing dropped into them.

The moment passed. Another. Kim could make out the outline of a shape at the top of the pod, where the cable met the case. Optimus _chirrped_ a soft query.

“I am very well, thank you. How are you?” a small voice from above answered in English.

“I am well, One-B. We are waiting for you. Why are you not dropping?”

“I do not wish to drop. I will climb down.”

There was a long, shocked silence from the waiting mecha.

Optimus said, “You will not be damaged in the fall. It is a short distance. I will catch you.”

“I prefer to climb.”

Kim peered upwards. One-B was on the cable now, inching upward toward the distant ceiling..

“Ratchet’s going to _freak_ when he finds out he missed this,” Kim murmured.

“We will share the video,” Slipstream murmured.

“What is that?” Hot Rod asked softly. “What is moving?”

Raf put an arm around him and leaned in. “That is the other sparkling,” he said.

“There are **other** sparklings!” the exclamation reverberated around the stone walls.

“You have a sister,” Raf said. “There is another sparkling. Someday, there will be many, many—” his voice broke, and he wiped his eyes on his arm.

“Easy, children,” Optimus rumbled gently. “Remain patient. Do not distract her.” He watched the small figure struggle higher, unevenly heaving up the cable.

He was standing on a foot full of shrapnel. Still. He wasn’t even blocking the pain inputs, because he couldn’t afford to lose fine sensory detail and risk a fall. Uncomplaining, patient, he watched the stubborn infant creeping upward.

“I really, really love you,” Kim breathed.

Optimus dropped his chin slightly, an indication he had heard. Then Kim’s phone vibrated. The message was text, not glyphs: THANK YOU. ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT I AM UNWORTHY. THIS TASK IS. A pause. MAY I DEPLOY YOU?

“Anything.”

“One-B?” he called softly, “There are humans here. They wish to meet you.”

A pause in the movement above. “I wish to meet humans. I have sensors optimized for humans. I am very curious. I will meet the humans when I climb down.”

“One-B, I am concerned—”

“I have abandoned the designation One-B. I have chosen to be addressed as Serenity.”

There was a long, absolute silence from the audience of humans and mecha. Kim spent it holding in shocked laughter. Dear god. The problem child was _Serenity_.

“It is a lovely name,” Optimus said calmly. “I am curious about how it was chosen…?”

“Ratchet suggested serenity as a goal. I researched the term. He was right. It is excellent. I have no idea how to attain it, though.”

Kim buried her face in her hands and gritted her teeth. Babies didn’t understand irony. Kim breathed through her nose until the urge to giggle passed.

I AM UNCERTAIN. THERE IS NO CLEAR COURSE FORWARD. The words appeared on Kim’s phone one at a time, slowly enough for Kim to see. Damn.

She typed her answer because it would not help if One-B—Serenity—overheard this: if she falls from the ceiling, will she die?

OF COURSE NOT. The answer was immediate and in larger than usual letters. It was followed by a pause. IF SHE FALLS FROM THAT HEIGHT AND IS NOT PERFECTLY CAUGHT, SHE WILL BE INJURED. THERE WILL BE PAIN. HER FIRST DAY, SHE IS BARELY BORN.

“Easy,” Kim murmured aloud. “If she falls, you’ll catch her.”

The small form was nearly at the end of the cable now. Another thought came to Kim, and she texted it to Optimus: Was she going to fly down?

A pause, then. NO. THERE ARE NO FLIGHT STRUCTURES. SHE CANNOT FLY.

That was probably good news.

There was a ‘clink’ in the upper distance, and the shape swung off the cable to nestle hard against the ceiling.

Kim’s breath froze.

Serenity stayed flush against the dark surface.

Clink. Clink. Clink. Slow, quiet, the progress continued across the ceiling.

“How is she doing it?” Raf whispered.

“Magnets,” Hot Rod said sagely. His sensor stalks were trained on the figure above speculatively.

Clink. Clink. The ceiling was metal—the interior hatches of the original silo. But the walls were stone. Magnets wouldn’t work.

 _Oh, god_. Kim rubbed her sweaty palms on her arms. _Come on, baby._

Clink. Clink. Clink. Her progress was steady. But it was a long way. And she was small.

Optimus shifted to stay under her.

Hot Rod and Raf sat down and cuddled against each other. Max hopped down to sniff them and then climbed onto Raf’s lap.

Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Tap.

The pop and crunch that followed made Kim gasp. Bits of crumbled stone peppered down the wall beside the entrance to the ‘Bot commissary.

With scrapes and crunches and sometimes a grating of metal-on-stone, Serenity crept down the wall.

Optimus, still as a statue beneath her, began to sing. It was quiet and slow, and it was only one voice alone, so it took a moment for Kim to recognize it as the song he had song at the energon party almost two months before.

“What is that?” Hot Rod asked softly.

Kim looked down at him, feeling acutely bad. He was almost a week old, how had they neglected to show him music? “Singing. He is singing a song. Do—do you like it.”

“I think. Yes. It’s nice.”

“Sentience, the knowing that is both the blessing and the blessed,” Raf whispered. “That propagates from core to core, the gift of Primus.” It was a better translation than Kim had been able to work out with Jazz. “What is division when the source of all is one?” With a sigh, the little boy put both arms around Hot Rod and bowed his head. “Is he writing this? Does he do that?”

Did Optimus compose? It had never come up, and Kim couldn’t guess. “This one is traditional,” she whispered, leaning toward the kids. “It’s part of a ritual cycle.”

Raf’s head snapped toward her. His eyes were wide and beginning to get angry. “This is traditional?” he hissed. “They _knew_ this, and they did it anyway?”

“Did what—?” But he meant the war, of course. Or the horrible mess Cybertron had become before the war.

Kim’s phone vibrated and she looked down. HAND THE PHONE TO RAF. The song had not faltered, naturally, while he sent the message. Optimus could handle seven communications tracks simultaneously.

Kim passed the phone over. He looked at it for a moment, murmured “Sorry,” and handed it back.

The screen said: I ACCEPT YOUR RIGHT TO RENDER JUDGEMENT. I WILLINGLY SUBMIT MYSELF TO YOUR EXAMINATION—AT ANY MOMENT OTHER THAN THIS ONE. After a moment, the words disappeared.

Kim took a deep breath. Raf was curled around Hot Rod and possibly crying. Optimus was standing on a foot with multiple impalements singing while Serenity was still at least thirty feet above his head and slowing.

On the floor below, Ironhide and Bee had dropped into alt and were rocking tensely on their tires. At the curve where the assembly area angled toward the infirmary Ratchet’s students were clustered together to watch. Strongarm and Hound hovered worriedly behind them. Even Chromia was there, hunched and leaning awkwardly between the wall and Jazz’s supporting arm, all her antennae aimed toward the far wall.

Her linguist—? Kim looked around. Chip, at least, seemed to be fine. He was watching the sparkling’s progress with a look of rapt attention. He had no idea this was abnormal. Kim bit back a sigh at the thought of that conversation. And then the fieldnotes.

Kim was going to have to write—like a scientist—about the _crunch_ of a baby mech sinking her own appendages into stone like pitons.

A squeal from Kim’s phone, echoed by the P.A. speakers.

Optimus broke off the song and said, “Status report requested but not commanded.” It was a direct gloss of a very short Cybertronix word.

“Locomotion is difficult.”

Carefully, Optimus said, “You have shown great courage. Your progress has exceeded expectation. I am impressed. It would be no disgrace to stop now.”

“I do not wish to stay here.”

“No,” he agreed gently. “You could drop.”

“I will not drop.”

“Perhaps you would reconsider if…someone else were positioned below you. Would you drop if Bumblebee or Hound were to catch you?”

And oh, damn, damn. He thought Serenity was rejecting him personally. For a moment, Kim had to close her eyes.

“Earth creatures do not drop. Earth creatures emerge by themselves, without help.”

The shocked silence flowed around the room, filled in the space around them like a lake of horrified confusion.

Kim—at some point she had sat down on the floor—shot to her feet. Her mouth was opening before she thought to reconsider, and she froze with it still open. Interfering now—

She was the senior Earth creature here. And someone had to say something. Because this— “What the actual—” _Wait. No. No cursing at the babies_. “Your information is straight-up incomplete, Serenity. I don’t know what Ratchet—Did Ratchet give you files on human parturition?”

“One. I had to ask nineteen times. He provided information on other species before uploading the data on humans.”

“Right. Okay.” Kim rolled her eyes. “So you looked at the data and concluded Earth creatures come out by themselves without any help?”

“Yes. Earth creatures do not drop. Earth creatures do not have help.”

Kim could see what had gone wrong, but before she could pick up the idea and go forward, Optimus said, “You are not a human or a feline. You are a mech. The procedures for mech emergence are particular to mech design.”

“Dropping is the procedure of portable gestation units used on colonies or space stations. I am not born on a colony or space station. Earth is a planet. Earth is not a colony. I am an Earth creature.”

“I admit to bafflement,” Optimus said. “Raf, if you have any ideas….”

Raf bit his lip and shook his head.

Kim slapped the rail. “Your conclusion is wrong, Serenity. Earth creatures have help. What does your files say about _mothers_?”

“The library does not contain information about mothers.”

Right. Because that concept wouldn’t seem important to Ratchet at all. “Check your language package. The word is defined.”

A long pause. “The concept is not clear.”

“It is totally normal for Earth creatures to be helped by mothers. Do you have definitions for obstetrician and midwife? Human babies have help. I had help.”

A pause. “Humans do not drop.”

Kim thought about the ducks that drop. There was a species of duck that laid eggs high in a tree—

She did not think she could use the duck to bluff her way through. “Sorry,” she whispered.

Optimus stepped forward and laid a hand on the stone wall. “Will you accept help, Serenity?”

The answer was so quiet, Kim barely heard it. “I will accept help.”

“You must stay very still and shield your sensors. This will be startling.”

“Compliance.”

Optimus retreated to the far side of the room. Ironhide joined him and they conferred silently for a moment. Then Ironhide sprouted a small wrist cannon and opened fire on the wall. In the confined space the noise was awful, and Kim frantically clamped both hands over her ears.

Perhaps she should have seen that coming.

The barrage was over in a few seconds, leaving a cloud of stone dust and a spray of little rocks that made it half-way to the balcony before pattering against the floor. While the echoes were still dying away, Serenity scampered down the tiny purchase points carved into the wall.

She stumbled as she stepped to the floor and then struggled up to be bipedal. Her sensors weren’t on stalks but settled on a recognizable face. Her torso was roughly triangular, shoulders small, arms thin. She turned her head, looking around. “I am impressed by your help,” she said to Ironhide.

Ironhide was very still for a moment and then settled on, “You’re welcome.”

“I have error messages,” she said, turning toward Optimus.

“Understandable. You have completed a difficult and extended task.” He crouched down and produced a handful of little energon snacks and held them out. “Will you share telemetry?”

She stepped forward, not quite reaching for the energon. “Would that be wise?”

“It would.”

She sprouted a cable from her wrist and offered it up. “Thank you,” Optimus said.

She took one of the tiny fuel spheres. “Thank you,” she said. Her servo hesitated for a moment and then popped it into her mouth—ingesting instead of fueling by line for the first time.

Optimus connected the cable to one of his ports. Serenity took another energon sphere but froze with it half-way to her buccal cavity. “No. I do not wish to shut down and perform defragmentation protocols. I wish to interact with humans. I am optimized to scan Earth life.”

“The humans will wait.” He sighed. “Kim? Will you wait?”

“I’ll wait,” she answered. “All the humans will wait.”

All the phones in the room and the P.A. speakers squawked a protest.

“Bedtime is an Earth custom,” Kim said, fighting down a new wave of panic, “You are free not to like it, but humans must do it and sparklings must do it.”

Hot Rod, who had been quiet for the last hour, looked up and waved his sensor stalks in interest. “I do not have to like bedtime?”

Kim sighed. “You don’t have to like it, but you have to do it.”

Raf patted him. “Why don’t you go down and show your sister how to do it? You’re really good at it.”

Hot Rod preened slightly and scrambled down the stairs. “Hello,” he said. “I am designated Hot Rod. I have wheels.”

Optimus settled the children on top of Ratchet, who was still recharging in the infirmary, then transformed and exited through the tunnel to the rear entrance. Kim’s heart sank as he disappeared, but she could understand wanting to be alone for a while.

What a disaster.

Parenthood sucked.

The other ‘Bots were standing around not looking at each other. Kim swallowed. “Anybody have time to debrief the ethnographer?”

Strongarm, Hound, and Slipstream eagerly leapt on the chance to talk about the stressful emergence. Kim only had to ask a couple of questions—their accounts of the event were clearly attempts to process confusion and worry. Chip, showing praiseworthy adaptability, produced a small pad and began to take notes too.

***

It was after two when Optimus returned. Aside from Kim, the only other person in the assembly area was Steeljaw, who had monitor duty. Almost at the aperture to the ‘Bot commissary, he abruptly stopped, transformed, and walked back to the steps where Kim was sitting.

“Hi,” Kim said, tabbing shut the book she’d been reading on her phone.

“Normally, you are in your dormant cycle at this time,” he said carefully.

Kim was too low. She stood up and took a couple of steps up the stairs. “Not a normal day,” she said.

“I did not thank you for your help. It was discourteous. I did not intend offence, but if—”

Kim shook her head. “No, it’s fine.”

“I departed without leave-taking. I apologize.”

“I’m not mad!” She had not expected – what, actually, _had_ she expected him to say when he returned? “I was just a little worried.”

A pause. “I am heavily armed.”

“No, it—Today was hard. Upsetting. And nobody can agree if it was a disaster or not. And. You went by yourself. Even when you’re…distressed, you don’t choose to be alone.”

He sank into a partial crouch, bringing his head level with hers. “I see. You detected an anomaly and were concerned. I apologize for causing this distress.”

Kim set her feet and took a deep breath. “You don’t seem quite like yourself _now_. And I get that you are going to have boundaries I don’t understand, and certainly you have a right to some alone time. I guess…I just want to say, I…care that you’re hurting.”

Softly, softly, he said, “Your conclusions are incorrect. I did not seek solitude while afflicted with extreme distress. There are religious functions that must be performed in privacy.”

 _Privacy_ was not a term mecha normally used. Kim frowned, trying to remember what she had been told about a Prime’s religious powers and obligations. It wasn’t much. Minimal, really. There could be many rituals she didn’t know about. “Oh.”

“I am aware that my demeanor is…more distant than usual. I was strongly affected by….” His vocalizer reset. “Kim. I was afraid that Serenity had been hopelessly corrupted by her contact with human technology during development.”

Kim closed her eyes. _Sorry my people broke your baby_ , just wasn’t something she could say. This was so horrible. There was no way to even put in words--

“However. It appears I have reversed cause and effect. Serenity’s character drives her development, not her exposure to alien ideas or technology. I am forbidden to edit or adjust Serenity’s cognition. She and Hot Rod must be allowed to seek their own functions if mecha are to survive on Earth.”

“Oh.” Was this good news? Possibly not. “That’s…heavy.”

“Indeed. It was not my intention to place such a burden on them. But the Matrix has blessed us with the souls of most benefit to themselves. And to us.”

“Damn.”

“They are children. We must protect them and teach them kindness. That has not changed.”

Kim nodded. “Right. Just…normal parenting. We probably need a meeting with June. She’s survived it. So far.”

“Yes. I have new respect for that.” He was silent for a moment. “Are you satisfied that my state of mind is stable?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Kim yawned “For doubting. Or interrupting. Whatever.”

“I am sorry for your distress.”

Kim nodded, accepting. She lifted a hand, palm out, and he leaned in far enough for her hands to ghost over the right cheek panel. “I should go to bed.”

“Then I will see you tomorrow.”

“Oh, absolutely. Tomorrow there will be two of them racing back and forth on wheels.”

~end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I'm looking toward the end. I've read lots of series--both fanfic and professional--that had a good start and wonderful momentum....and never really finished. Myself I never really 'finished' Imperfections. So. We'll have to see.


End file.
